An actress suing the producer of an anti-Islam film that spawned violent protests across the Muslim world will drop her California suit and file a new case in a US federal court over copyright claims, her lawyer said Monday.
Cindy Lee Garcia, who was in the film Innocence of Muslims, filed a lawsuit last week in a Los Angeles state court against Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the California man thought to be behind the film, claiming she was duped into playing a role and her life was put at risk as a result.
Her case also named YouTube and its parent, Google, as defendants for their role in distributing the short, crudely made film on the Internet. A California judge Thursday rejected her motion for an order for YouTube to pull the film off its site.
Hers is the first-known civil suit over the video depicting Prophet Mohammed negatively. Garcia’s lawyer Cris Armenta said on NBC’s Today: “I think we should be very clear that Google and YouTube are doing the wrong thing. They say in their own terms and guidelines that hate speech is not allowed. How can this not be hate speech? How can this not be wrong — morally, intellectually, legally?”