SAN FRANCISCO — An actress can’t use copyright law to force Google Inc. to remove a five-second clip of the film “Innocence of Muslims” from YouTube and other Internet platforms, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said in an en banc decision Monday that reversed last year’s controversial 2-1 panel decision.
The work of an individual performer in a film isn’t protected by copyright law, the court ruled. And Judge Alex Kozinski’s 2014 opinion ordering the clip’s removal “gave short shrift to the First Amendment values at stake,” Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote Monday.
