9th Circuit Rules for Google in Anti-Islam Copyright Case

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald’s ruling in Los Angeles against requiring Google to take off of YouTube a trailer for controversial anti-Islam video Innocence of Muslims. The 9th Circuit said Monday that the district court ruling “did not abuse its discretion” in denying actress Cindy Lee Garcia’s request for a mandatory preliminary takedown of the video. Garcia claimed in her original lawsuit, filed in 2012, that she had been tricked into briefly appearing in the video. Garcia was clearly “bamboozled” into appearing in the film, but the law and facts in the case didn’t “clearly favor” her copyright claim, the 9th Circuit said, saying the U.S. Copyright Office had refused to register Garcia’s performance separately from the Innocence of Muslims video. In the context of copyright infringement, “the only basis upon which the preliminary injunction was sought, Garcia failed to make a clear showing of irreparable harm to her interests as an author,” the 9th Circuit said. The circuit court’s en banc ruling Monday reversed a 2014 three-judge ruling by the circuit court that ordered the video’s takedown despite finding that Garcia’s copyright claim on the video was “doubtful" (see report in the March 3, 2014, issue). Neither Garcia nor Google immediately commented on the ruling. Multiple public interest groups that had criticized the 9th Circuit’s original ruling in the case praised the en banc reversal. The en banc ruling “is a victory for free speech and the First Amendment,” said Public Knowledge Policy Counsel Raza Panjwani in a statement. “In the case of controversial expression, like the trailer for Innocence of Muslims, copyright law should not trump the public’s right to discuss, criticize, or comment or report on that expression.”