News / USA

Judge Rejects Request for Restraining Order Against YouTube

Cindy Lee Garcia, right, and attorney M. Cris Armenta hold a news conference before a hearing at Los Angeles Superior Court in Los Angeles, September 20, 2012.
Cindy Lee Garcia, right, and attorney M. Cris Armenta hold a news conference before a hearing at Los Angeles Superior Court in Los Angeles, September 20, 2012.
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VOA News
A Los Angeles judge has denied a request to force YouTube to remove an anti-Islam film trailer that has been blamed for sparking violence in the Muslim world.

Judge Luis Lavin rejected the request from actress Cindy Lee Garcia, who appears in the film, for a temporary restraining order against YouTube and its parent company Google, in part because the film's producer was not served with a copy of the lawsuit.

Garcia contended that keeping the trailer online, among other things, violates her right to privacy.

Garcia also filed suit Wednesday against the film's producer, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, accusing him of having duped her into believing she was appearing in an ancient Egyptian adventure film. The suit claims the film's original dialogue was later replaced with voiced-over dialogue demeaning Islam's Prophet Muhammad.  

Garcia says she has received death threats since the film trailer was posted on the Internet and is unable to see her family out of fear they could be harmed.

Nakoula was questioned by federal authorities last week to determine if he violated the terms of his probation on a 2010 conviction on bank fraud. He is prohibited from accessing the Internet without permission of his probation officers.

The uproar about the film led to violent anti-American protests in several countries, including an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left the U.S. ambassador and three other embassy officials dead.

Some information for this report was provided by AP and Reuters.

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by: kafantaris from: USA, Ohio
September 20, 2012 6:46 PM
John Stuart Mill proved long ago that the benefit of freedom of speech is that it assures the continuing growth and relevance of our most cherished institutions:
“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”


by: Optimist from: Everywhere
September 20, 2012 5:55 PM
Please, disregard the opinion I posted earlier. It was not meant for the article above.


by: Optimist from: Everywhere
September 20, 2012 5:34 PM
The First Amendment is part of the Constitution for the United States of America, and it is designed to protect Americans to express their opinion freely. What happened in the case of an Anti-Islam work, the First Amendment falls short, for the work was deliberately crafted to incite violence outside of the realm of the US political border. If anything, it was slanderous and defamation rather than opinion deserving protection by the First Amendment. Hence, the United States Constitution cannot be cited for a protection against violence inciting work intended outside of the United States. Every citizen needs to stand and defend the constitution of the United States by making sure the First Amendment is not abused.

Especially, when the work intentionally crafted to incite chaos and in that mayhem if Americans are killed on the account of insulting other people's culture, it is totally wrong to call the First Amendment. Unless we protect the Constitution and all the Amendments serve as the founding fathers intended it, which is to protect American citizens from liability for expressing their thoughts peacefully, then we may lose parts of the constitution. Perhaps the first article that will fall victim could be the First Amendment, for there are plenty of opportunities to misuse it and seek protection from it.

Invoking the First Amendment while exporting insult against a certain culture in the name of spreading American values makes a mockery to the First Amendment and stains the Constitution of the United States. The death of several Americans due to a reaction by the insulted groups outside of the United States puts the American government and people in a very precarious position to either ignore our loss or avenge against the group insulted by an American from afar. Unless the government of the United States and the people of America clearly distinguish what must be defended and what must be punished, it may result in limiting our ability to continue the freedom we have been enjoying for the past 230 years for the majority and 47 for African Americans.


by: Michael from: USA
September 20, 2012 8:59 AM
She is under the false impression that these reputation-injury cases apply universally: Forced Redefinition, New Terms (she must accept responsibility since the terms cannot be recalled)

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