By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES, Nov 30 (Reuters) - An actress who said she was
duped into appearing in an anti-Islam film that stoked violent
protests against the United States across the Muslim world lost
on Friday her second legal bid to force the video off YouTube.
Denying a request by actress Cindy Lee Garcia for a court
order requiring the popular online video site to remove the
crudely made 13-minute clip, a federal judge found she was
unlikely to prevail on her claims of copyright infringement.
U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald of Santa Clara,
California, also canceled a Dec. 3 hearing he had previously set
for oral arguments over Garcia's request.
Garcia's lawyer, Cris Armenta, told Reuters she planned to
appeal the decision.
The lawsuit, filed in September, names YouTube and its
parent company Google Inc as defendants, along with the film's
producer.
A previous motion by Garcia for a temporary restraining
order against YouTube's continued posting of the video was
rejected by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge.
Garcia's case was the first known civil litigation stemming
from the video, billed as a film trailer, which depicts the
Prophet Mohammad as a fool and a sexual deviant. The clip
sparked a torrent of anti-American unrest in Egypt, Libya and
dozens of other Muslim countries.
The outbreak of violence coincided with an attack on U.S.
diplomatic facilities in Benghazi in September that killed four
Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.
For many Muslims, any depiction of the prophet is considered
blasphemous.
Google has refused to remove the film from YouTube, despite
pressure from the White House and others to take it down, though
the company has blocked the trailer in Egypt, Libya and other
Muslim countries.
COPYRIGHT CLAIM
Garcia has accused the purported filmmaker of fraud, libel
and unfair business practices.
But her federal lawsuit also asserts a copyright claim to
her performance in the video, titled "The Innocence of Muslims,"
and accuses Google of infringing on that copyright by
distributing the video without her approval via YouTube.
But in a three-page ruling, the judge questioned the
validity of such a claim. He held that even if she could prove a
legitimate copyright interest in her film performance, she
effectively relinquished her rights to producers of the film.
Fitzgerald also ruled that Garcia failed to show that she
would suffer irreparable harm without an injunction.
Garcia's lawsuit identifies Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, an
Egyptian-born Coptic Christian living in the Los Angeles area,
as the film's producer. His legal name has since been
established to be Mark Basseley Youssef and he served time in
federal prison for bank fraud.
According to the lawsuit, Youssef operated under the assumed
name of Sam Bacile when he misled Garcia and other performers
into appearing in an anti-Muslim film they believed was to be an
adventure drama called "Desert Warrior." She claims to have
since received death threats.
Despite Friday's ruling against her, "we hope that worldwide
the message has been heard that Ms. Garcia was not complicit and
did not voluntarily participate in this heinous piece of hate
speech," her lawyer said in a statement.
Youssef was sent back to jail for a year on Nov. 7 for
probation violations stemming from his role in making the video,
including his use of an alias in connection with the film.
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