Actress Sues Film-maker & Others Over "Innocence of Muslims" Role

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In Cindy Lee Garcia v. Google, Inc., You Tube, LLC, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula & Does 1-10 (Case No. 2:12-cv-08315-MWF-VBK), filed this week in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, an actress has alleged copyright infringement [17 U.S.C. sec. 501], libel, fraud and unfair business practices concerning her involvement in the film, The Innocence of Muslims, an amateurish anti-Muslim production blamed for inciting riots in several MidEast countries, Reuters reports.

Garcia, a Bakersfield, California, native, was unsuccessful last week in herattempt to get a California Superior Court judge to enjoin You Tube from posting the 13-minute video. The actress contends she was duped by the trailer's producer, 55-year-old Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, an Egyptian-American Coptic Christian using an alias, Sam Bacile, into believing she was appearing in an adventure film entitled Desert Warrior, rather than a video diatribe that portrays the Islamic Prophet Mohammed as a womanizing buffoon. She alleges some of her dialogue was re-dubbed without her knowledge. Nakoula's filmography is sparse, but his resume does sport a federal bank fraud conviction.

You Tube owner Google has resisted entreaties from the White House to remove the video from You Tube but has blocked it from being viewed in Muslim nations such as Egypt and Libya. Garcia will try to persuade federal Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald that the defendants are infringing on her copyrighted performance by posting the video without her approval, but Google counters that actors are not legally protected against how a film in which they appear is perceived, according to the Reuters account.