A federal appeals court will reconsider a decision to order YouTube to take down an anti-Muslim film clip that sparked violence in the Middle East and death threats to the actors from those who considered it blasphemous to the Prophet Muhammad.
 
An 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena will hear arguments Monday by Google, which owns YouTube, disputing the court's decision to remove "Innocence of Muslims" from the popular video sharing service.
 
A divided three-judge panel ruled in February that actress Cindy Lee Garcia had a copyright claim to the 2012 video because she believed she was acting in a much different production than the one that appeared.

Garcia was paid $500 for a movie called "Desert Warrior" she believed had nothing to do with religion, but ended up in a five-second scene in which her voice was dubbed over so her character asked if Muhammad was a child molester.

"These, of course, are fighting words to many faithful Muslims and, after the film aired on Egyptian television, there were protests that generated worldwide news coverage," Judge Alex Kozinski wrote in the 2-1 opinion. "While answering a casting call for a low-budget amateur film doesn't often lead to stardom, it also rarely turns an aspiring actress into the subject of a fatwa."

Google argued that the copyright was owned by filmmaker Mark Basseley Youssef, who wrote the script, managed the production and dubbed over Garcia's dialogue.

A dissenting judge said Garcia played no creative role that would give her ownership rights.