Google has been slapped with a lawsuit by the actress who has faced death threats for her role in the controversial anti-Muslim film 'Innocence of Muslims'. 

The actress, Cindy Lee Garcia, has filed an appeal alleging contempt of court's order against the internet company, and that the video with her performance is still available on YouTube. This is despite a court order saying that no copies of the video with her performance should be available on the video-sharing platform. 

She had sued Google last year to get the film removed from YouTube, but court denied her appeal. 

In an appeal filed on Tuesday, Garcia's lawyer said that copies of the movie's trailer with her performance were still on YouTube until the time of filing. They could also be accessed in Egypt by altering the settings from global to country-specific. 

The filing said that the video being available from any computer in the world is in violation of the earlier court order. It also said that Google continues to profit illegally via traffic from the channels that have uploaded the video. 

Garcia's legal counsel said the maximum penalty of $150,000 for each video is the "only fair measure of the contempt." He called for Google to submit bonds for the same amount for all 852 channels that have the video uploaded on YouTube, amounting to a total of $127.8 million. 

The actress has also complained that Google has only disabled videos with her performance rather than taking them down altogether. She has also raised an issue against the "snide message" that the company has put up on such web pages. 

"This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by an actress over her 5-second appearance in the video. A US court has ordered Google to remove the video. We strongly disagree with this copyright ruling and will fight it," reads the message. 

In a ruling earlier this month, US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, San Francisco had said Google must take down all copies of the video and not allow any future uploads. However, it later amended the order and said the video may be published on YouTube, provided Garcia's part was cut. Videos featuring Garcia need to be edited or removed from YouTube. 

According to Garcia, she never acted in 'Innocence of Muslims' and the portions featuring her were taken from another movie she acted in. In the controversial film, she appears to be asking, "Is your Mohammed a child molester?" She has received several death threats for her performance. 

While Garcia says she has copyrights for the part she appears to be playing in the video, Google claims that the Copyright Act distinguishes between a performance and a copyrightable performance. The company has also said in the past that such copyright claims would encourage those who have appeared in amateur videos to get them removed from YouTube.

Reuters : Fri Apr 19 2013, 08:37 hrs

Google Inc's core Internet business grew net revenue 23 percent in the first quarter, softening the effect of a sharp decline in its Motorola mobile phone division.

Shares of Google, which reached an all-time high of $844 in March, were up 1.5 percent to $777.75 in after hours trading on Thursday.

"Google eked out an acceptable quarter, but it wasn't easy," said Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan.

Google's core search advertising business remains solid but unexciting, Rohan said.

He noted that Google's adjusted profit of $11.58 per share benefited from a significantly lower tax rate due to a retroactive research and development tax credit. Without that benefit, Rohan said Google would have missed Wall Street's earnings target of $10.66 per share.

The world's No.1 Internet search engine, Google has stepped up efforts to adapt its business to a rapidly changing technology landscape in which consumers are increasingly accessing the Web using mobile devices instead of PCs.

The company's Android operating system has leaped past Apple Inc's iPhone and its iOS software to become the most popular smartphone software, used on more than 70 percent of devices, according to industry research firm Gartner.

Google improved its cost-per-click, a critical metric that refers to the price advertisers pay the Internet search giant, in the first quarter. The CPC rate declined 4 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, versus a 6 percent decline in the fourth quarter.

"It's classic Google. There's plenty of things to like and some things not to like," said BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis.

NEW PRODUCTS KEY TO FUTURE

Google CEO Larry Page spent much of the conference call discussing new products such as the Google Glass wearable computers and high-speed fiber networks that the company is developing, which he said were vital to the company's future success.

"If you look at most companies they never do anything different, and eventually they run into problems for that reason," said the 40-year-old Page, who co-founded Google in 1998 with Sergey Brin.

He said the new lineup of yet-to-be-released Motorola devices would offer a variety of improvements over current smartphones, with features such as longer battery life and better resistance to shattering or damage from spilled drinks.

For now however, the Motorola business continues to be a drag on Google's consolidated results, said Gillis of BGC Partners.

Revenue at the Motorola business, which Google acquired for $12.5 billion in May 2012, declined to $1.02 billion in the first three months of the year, from $1.51 billion in the fourth quarter. The Motorola business posted an operating loss of $271 million in the first quarter.

Google's main Internet business generated $9.99 billion in first-quarter net revenue, which excludes fees paid to partner websites, compared to $8.14 billion in the first quarter of 2012.

Seven analysts polled by Reuters had yielded an average forecast of $9.78 billion.

"There was nothing exceptional about the top line. But I think CPC rates are again incrementally a little bit better," said Needham & Co analyst Kerry Rice, referring to Google's cost per click rates.

Google's search ad rates have been under pressure as more consumers access its online services on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, where advertising rates are lower than on PCs.

In February, Google changed the way marketers run ad campaigns on Google, blurring the distinction between ads destined for PCs and mobile ads, in a move that some analysts believe could help bolster Google's overall ad prices.

Google also recently converted its shopping search feature to an all-advertising based system, in which retailers are required to buy ads featuring photos of their products in order to be included in the search results. More than one billion products are now listed, Google Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora said during the conference call.

Overall first quarter net income, including its money-losing Motorola Mobility mobile phone business, was $3.35 billion or $9.94 per share. That compares with net income of $2.89 billion or $8.75 per share in the year-ago period, before Google acquired Motorola.

Consolidated revenue in the first quarter was $13.97 billion, versus $10.65 billion in the year-ago period.