And Garcia lost at the District Court level then she prevailed on appeal but
then the appeals court granted a rehearing because they were
a lot of concerns about the idea of a rights holder being a performer.
>> Right, and the majority of the panel,
when the ninth circuit heard the course as a whole court, the majority of the panel
held that although she might prevail on the grounds of another legal theory, they
seemed to wonder why she hadn't brought a privacy claim, or something like that.
She had no copyright in the film and could not get an injunction on that basis.
So this is another aspect of how complicated
copyright ownership in film is.
The court held that finding a copyright in each author's work would lead to,
they said, a legal morass.
That's kinda like a tango.
A legal morass in the movie industry.
They refer to the normal practice where filmmakers and
studios use contracts to resolve the issues.
But they didn't seem to be an expressed contract here and
they were reluctant to go beyond normal practice
to find a copyright just the way the copyright office was unwilling to do that.
Also under the copyright law a work is fixed in a tangible
medium of expression by or under the authority of the author.
Garcia didn't have this kind of role in the making of this film.
>> She obviously had very little control.
>> She had very little control.
She wasn't an author so her performance wasn't intended as a stand alone work.
For her to succeed in getting an injunction,
she would of had to show irreparable harm would happen
if they didn't immediately pull the film from YouTube or the trailer from YouTube.
She had shown that she was in a very distressing situation, but
she couldn't prove that she was an author,
who was entitled to an injunction because irreparable harm.
The barrier to get that injunction is high.
And that's because of the First Amendment.
We don't like prior restraint, and
injunctions like that would be considered prior restraint.
So the upshot of this is that Garcia was tricked and she suffered harm.
She ought to get some kind of redress, but
copyright law was not the way to get the remedy that she wanted.
>> I like the fact that the court said a weak
copyright claim cannot justify censorship in the guise of authorship.