Controversy has followed “Innocence of Muslims” ever since the 14-minute video was uploaded to YouTube and dubbed into Arabic. After provoking violent and sometimes deadly protests around the world, the film is now setting off a legal firestorm at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
The combination of Google’s uncompromising litigation position on behalf of its subsidiary and Chief Judge Alex Kozinski’s outside-the-box handling of the case, which included a secret takedown order that Google was forbidden from making public for a week, has proven highly combustible in technology, media, motion picture and academic circles—and apparently even the court itself.
