An actress who said she was duped into appearing in a highly sacrilegious 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 blasphemous clip, a federal judge found she was unlikely to prevail on her claims of copyright infringement.
US District Judge Michael Fitzgerald of Santa Clara, California, also cancelled a December 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 anti-Islam video, billed as a film trailer. The highly sacrilegious clip sparked a torrent of anti-American unrest in Egypt, Libya and dozens of other Muslim countries.