According to the recent news, an American appeals court will think once again whether Google must remove an anti-Islamic movie whish sparked protests across the Muslim world from YouTube. Earlier in 2014, a 3-judge panel on the US court of appeals sided with an actress featuring in the movie and ordered Google to take the film down. The recent news is that an 11-judge panel will now rehear the case.
The woman who launched the case was Cindy Lee Garcia. She objected to the movie after learning that it incorporated a clip which she had made for another film, partially dubbed and where she appeared to be saying: “Is your Mohammed a child molester?”

A few days ago, Garcia’s attorney confirmed that her legal team would continue to advance her copyright interests, along with her right to get rid of death threats. In respond, Google said that it is happy with the decision to agree and re-examine the case, because the company strongly disagreed with the original ruling.

Earlier, a 9th circuit panel by a 2-1 vote rejected the tech giant’s assertion that the removal of the movie known as “Innocence of Muslims” would amount to a prior restraint of speech that infringed the constitution of the United States. The court decision in question has also raised questions on whether actors may have an independent copyright on their individual performances in some cases. A number of companies, such as Twitter, Netflix and the ACLU, supported Google and filed court papers opposing that idea in order to urge the court to rehear the case.

As you may know, the controversial movie, billed as a trailer, depicted the Prophet Muhammad as a fool and a sexual deviant. The film is known to have sparked waves of anti-American unrest among Muslims in Egypt, Libya and other countries a couple years ago. In the meantime, that outbreak has also coincided with an attack on American diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, which killed 4 US citizens, including the American ambassador to Libya. Of course, for most of Muslims, any depiction of the prophet is blasphemous.

Google arguments in court were that Cindy Lee Garcia appeared in the movie only for 5 seconds, and that while the actress might have legal claims against the director of the movie, who didn’t reveal what kind of material is being shot, she shouldn’t win a copyright lawsuit against the tech giant. Google claimed that the “Innocence of Muslims” has now become an important part of public debate and shouldn’t be taken down from YouTube.