Title of the article (and this thread) sounds like a blatant 1st Amendment violation, but:
Is there precedent to this type of copyright complaint?
I don’t see it as a First Amendment issue, any more than any other video taken down from Youtube for copyright claims.
I’m not a lawyer and I can’t comment on the validity of her copyright claim - but that seems to be the basis of the ruling.
CT wonders how much Cindy Lee Garcia received and from whom to file the complaint.
This surprised me, though:
Google wasn’t pleased. “We strongly disagree with this ruling and will fight it,” a Google spokesperson told Mashable.
Doesn’t Google have a pretty strict policy on YouTube content?
There’s certainly precedent for bogus copyright complaints as a tool of censorship. That said, Garcia would seem to have a valid (though perhaps not compelling) case if she was indeed tricked into giving permission to use her image under false pretenses, particularly if the final edit gives the false impression that she agrees with Pastor Terry Jones’ bigoted asshattery.
Well, like when you have a strict rules for your kid and someone else tells you to tell the kid to stop doing something. It’s a fundamental flaw with out society that no one is supposed to say anything about how you are raising your kid. I suspect with Google they just don’t like the idea of someone else telling them (they have) to take something down.
Seems like there is. Movie studios ask Youtube to remove all kinds of things. This seems like a disputed contract issue between the owner of the film and an actor.
Of course the stupid people commenting on this on Yahoo comments or something like that all think its a 1st Amendment issue :rolleyes:
Think of it this way: girl is unknowingly filmed on a secret camera while changing for a modelling gig. Video is posted online. Does it sound like it would be a First Amendment violation if a court ordered the video removed?
As a First Amendment fundamentalist, this issue is vexing, due to circumstances both extreme and deadly. Vast numbers of Muslim people have come to believe that you and I, as Americans, wake every morning freshly committed to the destruction and eradication of Islam. It might be relegated to the same contemptuous disregard that the “War on Christmas” so richly deserves, except that people die.
Take the Nazi propaganda film, The Eternal Jew, as vile a piece of vicious slander as ever corrupted a strip of cellophane. We can see it now as a depressing and morbid bit of history, unlikely to affect anyone who isn’t already insane. It is no longer provocative, merely nauseating and deeply depressing.
This…“film”, I guess…is provocative, I cannot help but think it is intentionally so. And it plays right into the hands of our enemies, who would like nothing better than to convince their fellow Muslims that we hate Islam down to our very toes. And some of us do, more is the pity.
Is that reason enough to back away from my faith in free expression, to say “Well, sure, free speech and all that, unless you go Too Far!” Tempting, very tempting.
But I hesitate at the brink, turn back to that fundamental assertion, that the best antidote for bad free speech is good free speech. But that is a faith, can’t prove a word of it. How many lives might have been saved if that monstrosity never saw the light of day, would that be sufficient cause to betray the principle? How could free speech be more valuable than innocent lives?
I still say “No”, but am sorely troubled. If some legal mechanism were invoked to censor it and remove it from the public sphere, I don’t think I could find it in myself to object.
Sorry if my OP was misleading, but I’m not asking if the Google situation is a 1st Amendment issue. I’m asking if there has been similar situations of copyright complaints of actors claiming they were mislead about what they were acting in.
But none of this has anything to do with this case. From the link in the OP:
Her image was put into a film she never agreed to be in, and her voice was overdubbed to say something very offensive, resulting in death threats.
Are you quite sure you understand what’s going on here?
It’s not a free speech issue. It’s about a deceptive use of someone’s likeness without that person’s consent.
Absolutely. The maker of the film can reshoot the exact same scene and dialogue with a non-duped actress and then everything will be AOK. He can display it to his wicked little heart’s content.
Except that I am not convinced that is anything more than a legalistic mechanism to achieve a purpose. Now, if that isn’t the case, peachy keen, let it be ground up and recycled as guitar picks. Of course, now that it exists in cyber-space, that is kinda irrelevant.
And if this thread is strictly confined to the fine points of copyright law, I doubt that there are more than three of us on the entire board with sufficient expertise to offer an opinion. And, as before, the fact that it existed in cyberspace and copies could be downloaded (yes?), then the whole exercise is pretty much moot.
How does this make the deceptive use of someone’s likeness without that person’s consent any more justified?
Would we be having this discussion of the film in question was Mars Needs Women?
Probably not, because it wouldn’t have legions of willfully-ignorant knuckle-draggers with a persecution complex coming out of the woodwork to defend it by mischaracterizing what’s going on. Instead, the removal would pass quietly and without controversy because (assuming the actress’s claims were factually correct) it’s plainly the right thing to do.
No, because nobody would give a thought to arguing with the actress: her case would be obviously correct.
And you and I would never have heard about it. And only the SDMB lawyers would be discussing it, and I doubt either of them would be that interested.
So, now that you know what the case was actually about, would you like to talk about the actual case…or would you rather talk about the untrue gossip?
Would that be your opinion if it were your image and dubbed words used?
Say you were to pose for a photo shoot for an ad campaign for Fuzzy Bubbles energy drink. But instead, you image was posted on the internet with a swastika in the background and and a hateful line about mongrel races, looking as if it were your quote. (if I am not mistaken, this is an exact parallel)
“It’s already out there in cyberspace, so…oh well.” Is that what you would say?
Or would you sue? And if you sued, do you think it would be proper for the court to order the offender to remove your likeness from the site?