9th Circuit: Actress’s Work May Have Been Hijacked, But It Wasn’t Infringed

An actress whose small part in an amateur film was “re-purposed” without her knowledge into a vicious anti-Muslim film – garnering her a fatwa from a cleric said to be a Muslim – has lost her copyright case. Cindy Lee Garcia’s lawsuit sought, among other things, to force Google to remove the offending film from YouTube. Google had argued a victory for Garcia would establish “unprecedented copyright protections for actors.” The majority Ninth Circuit opinion seemed to agree, saying that the appeal “teaches a simple lesson — a weak copyright claim cannot justify censorship in the guise of authorship.”