Paul Alan Levy and Scott Michelman, Public Citizen Litigation Group, Washington, D.C., for Amicus Curiae Public Citizen.
Justin Hughes, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, California, for Amici Curiae Professors Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Justin Hughes, Pete Menell, and David Nimmer.
OPINION
McKEOWN, Circuit Judge:
In this case, a heartfelt plea for personal protection is juxtaposed with the limits of copyright law and fundamental principles of free speech. The appeal teaches a simple lesson—a weak copyright claim cannot justify censorship in the guise of authorship.
By all accounts, Cindy Lee Garcia was bamboozled when a movie producer transformed her five-second acting performance into part of a blasphemous video proclamation against the Prophet Mohammed.[1] The producer—now in jail on unrelated matters—uploaded a trailer of the film, Innocence of Muslims, to YouTube. Millions of viewers soon watched it online, according to Garcia. News outlets credited the film as a source of violence in the Middle East. Garcia received death threats.
- ↑ We use the transliteration "Mohammed" because both parties use this spelling. We note that, according to the American Library Association-Library of Congress Arabic Romanization Table, available at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html, an alternate transliteration is "Muhammad."
