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As the dissent argues, it is debatable at best that an actor maintains a copyright over their part in a movie, even without an explicit grant of rights. Absent a clear precedent there, and considering the length of the performance, prior restraint should not even be considered. The Supreme Court has been very clear about this.

In fact, their only consideration of public interest is the statement which the EFF also found so objectionable: "But the First Amendment doesn’t protect copyright infringement".

> Youssef is still perfectly free to produce a cut in which her 5 seconds is excised or replaced and re-upload it to Youtube

I see no reference to this in the decision. On the contrary, I see:

> Concurrent with this opinion, we have issued an order directing Google to take down all copies of “Innocence of Muslims” from YouTube and any other platforms within its control and to take all reasonable steps to prevent further uploads.

From the brief, start of page 11:

"Garcia may assert a copyright interest only in the portion of “Innocence of Muslims” that represents her individual creativity"

The brief doesn't explicitly say that Youssef may upload a different cut but the quote you provided doesn't directly contradict it either since the copies that it's referring to contain Garcia's copyrighted material. A new cut would be a new copyrighted work.

Yes, but this isn't a decision on the copyright claim. It is an injunction, ordering all copies of the film removed from youtube.

She may eventually prevail and have only her portion of the video removed, with the rest able to be distributed intact. Until that day, though, that in no way justifies the government restraining speech before her claim is even evaluated, especially given the particulars of the case. Prior restraint is almost universally a very bad thing, and something that needs to be fought tooth and claw.

Fair enough, I didn't touch on the issue of prior restraint in my post and it is potentially troubling. The justification for prior restraint is that Garcia claims that she is facing death threats as a result of this movie being online and this is causing her irreparable harm. So on top of all the other factors I mentioned before, also don't produce a work that will cause people to send death threats.

I'm not saying I agree with the court's decisions, just that if you look at the actual brief, it's not the landmark, precedent setting case the media wants it to be.

If you look at "the actual brief" you are not looking at "the court's decision" in the instant case.

> "Garcia may assert a copyright interest only in the portion of “Innocence of Muslims” that represents her individual creativity"

I don't understand that argument. I thought copyright (outside of dance) was created when that creativity was affixed to media. Doesn't the person filming it own that copyright?

Legally it may be right but morally it just pisses me off.

What world do we live in when some religions nuts are allowed to exert undue influence by threatening the actors.

What you feel insulted by a movie? Keep it to yourself and move on.

I don't care if you're Muslim, Christian, Jewish or whatever the new religion your neighbor came up with once you start forcing your beliefs on other people by threats or whatever you find appropriate you have crossed the line.

I think all ginger-haired people should be sent to live on an island!

Woah there Fuxy, that's a bit nasty! You shouldn't say things like that.

--

And, of course, you didn't. It doesn't really matter whether or not you agree with the statement, if you fear that ginger-haired people will take offence, or if the more extreme ginger-haired will attack you for it - the fact is, if someone deliberately misrepresents your views by making up something that you didn't say and putting your name on it then you should be able to have a say about whether or not that thing is disseminated around the world. In the case of this film it's quite possible that being associated with it might well harm the actor's ability to work. It's quite reasonable that they should go to court to express the fact that they didn't agree to be a part of what was eventually released.

This is really quite a simple case of deception - the actors were told they were signing on for one thing, and the director made something completely different. He lied to them. He shouldn't have done.

It is quite clear by now that none of the actors ever knew what they were signing up for.

That is quite rude on the producers part however the reality is producers are bound to fuck you over if you act for long enough.

Really not cool on his part but that's a different issue.

The person didn't exert her rights because she didn't agree with the movie she did it because she got death threats.

Motivation is important.

The producer should have recruited for the movie he was going to make, or had everyone sign an appropriate contract.

It's not right to throw the rights of the actors out the window just because Islam got involved.

> misrepresents your views by making up something that you didn't say and putting your name on it then you should be able to have a say about whether or not that thing is disseminated around the world

Really ? We're talking about actors here. Isn't this akin to claiming Christian Bale's political views have been "misrepresented" as vigilantism ? Seriously. These are actors. Nobody in their right mind assumes they espouse the views they do on screen.

I find it weird that people are conflating different religions/ideologies here and attempting to apply one to the other, and guess what ?

1) people are angry about the result

2) it doesn't work, doesn't produce consistent thinking

Let's get real here :

a) it is an essential part of islam, to hunt down and execute people who criticize islam. This should not be looked at as exceptional at all, in fact it is quite normal for religions and ideologies to do this. It is the normal case for ideologies to hunt down and punish/kill criticism. Yes, Christianity doesn't do so, and obviously America's own brand of democracy doesn't either (of course, in both cases you can still give examples where people were executed for their opinions. The point is, it is not done as a matter of course, the way it is done in islamic nations, or china)

b) The idea of separating the person from their political (and business) activities the way it is done in the modern western world, like you're doing, sounds absurd to anyone outside of said western world. In most societies, whether muslim, chinese, black african ideologies, the roman empire, ... and even what we know about others like aztec civilization there is absolutely zero difference between the person, the job, and the political activities. So yes, in all those civilizations actors routinely get punished if they follow wrong ideologies.

c) the idea that no ideology is "wrong" (or rather, that there is more than one acceptable ideology at all) is very new, and fake. Obviously what people really mean is that as long as you consider our Christianity-derived law as the primary ideology, you can call yourself whatever the fuck you want. What is considered "disgusting", "extremist", "evil" and extremely illegal however, is applying even tiny amounts of sharia, or for another example communism in cases where it would violate our normal law. This is of course the whole point of those ideologies. What people mean when they say communism is NOT voluntary sharing of capital. What people mean when they say islam is NOT partially applying muslim food laws.

Nobody in their right mind assumes they espouse the views they do on screen.

No one assumes that the actor believes the same thing as the character, but they will, quite reasonably in my opinion, assume that the actor agreed to act in the film with the dialogue they are hearing.

Very few actors would sign on to a project where they're being filmed knowing nothing at all of the audio that is going to be added later. That's essentially what happened here. The director lied to them. It's not fair to deny them the opportunity to disassociate themselves from the film if that happens.

I feel like I'm repeating the obvious here : these are actors. Sorry to repeat myself, but I get the distinct impression it's not getting through.

> No one assumes that the actor believes the same thing as the character, but they will, quite reasonably in my opinion, assume that the actor agreed to act in the film with the dialogue they are hearing.

Everyone assumes that.

"a) it is an essential part of islam, to hunt down and execute people who criticize islam ... Christianity doesn't do so"

There are Five Pillars to Islam[1]. None of which explicitly call for genocide. The early history of Islam was violent. But so too was the early history of Christianity. The past was extraordinarily violent. That there are some people who profess to be advancing Islam by killing in no way makes it an essential part of Islam. In the same way, the people who profess to be advancing Christianity and choose to do so by killing too[2] hardly makes it an essential part of Christianity. Islam has Sharia law. Christianity has Leviticus. Christians are still debating how much crazy stuff from Leviticus they can foist into a modern society and I have no doubt Muslims try to do the same with Sharia.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Pillars_of_Islam [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_terrorism

Your comment makes no sense at all. First : who said anything about genocide ? Plus what have "the five pillars" or any short summary to do with what the whole does or does not do. I just read the five principles of testing cars, none of them have anything to do with whether the car actually fucking drives.

Google "asma bint marwan", read the first link, then judge for yourself if islam wants to see it's critics killed. Second, check what the law actually says in theory. Thirdly check what laws are applied in muslim states, including "modern" ones like morocco or turkey.

Then making the same judgement about Christianity is simple. Read the New Testament, decide for yourself what it says about blasphemy. Second check canon law. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02595a.htm . The worst punishment in Christianity for anything is exile (with the exception of murder). Thirdly check what is actually practiced in Christian countries.

Frankly if you think these 2 are at all comparable you need your head examined. Or else you're one of those "the US is as bad as the taliban, because during a war once a soldier did X and was only decades later convicted for it" morons.

As to whether islam calls for genocide, that is equally obvious. Read quran, chapter 9 verse 11. That is a blatant call for genocide, plain and direct. Granted, it is very hard to determine who should be killing who, when, where and why, but does that really matter ? You can have long tedious discussions about who/when/where. But that it calls for muslims to commit genocide on some group is not something any sane person can deny.

> Youssef hired Garcia to work on "Desert Warrior", a film that was described as materially different from "Innocence of Muslims".

If you are interested in hearing more about the story of how the movie came to be, Anna Gurki (another actor in the film) wrote a letter about it: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2012/09/a-letter-from-scared-a...

No need to inform us that you are not a lawyer. That was made quite clear when you gave us your take on the decision after reading the brief, never even mentioned first amendment concerns (good or bad) and failed to limit the scope of the precedent variable to the Ninth Circuit.

I'd love to be educated. This seems to be primarily an IP case. What are the first amendment concerns?

I'm not a lawyer either, but from having read a few cases in the past, it seems that preliminary injunctions - like the one issued to force Google to take the film down - that prevent speech are usually considered violations of the First Amendment except in extreme cases.

Whether this applies to copyright cases is still unclear, but it seems the Supreme Court has taken that stance: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1802778

Why so rude? A person tries to contribute and your shoot them down, because they aren't an expert!?

Were you not hugged enough as child?