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IMDb Sues California To Overturn Law Forcing Them To Remove Actors' Ages (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is suing California over a law forcing the website to remove the ages of actors on request, saying it is unconstitutional. California passed a law in September ruling that "a commercial online entertainment employment service provider" would be required to remove details of the age of any of its subscribers within five days, on the request of the subscriber. The law was intended to fight age discrimination in the film industry and had been campaigned for by actors' groups. The president of the union Sag-Aftra wrote in August that actors "face blatant age discrimination every day as websites routinely used for casting talent force birth dates and ages on casting decision-makers without their even realizing it." However, IMDb's suit (pdf) claims that the law "does not advance, much less achieve" the goal of reducing age discrimination, and that it violates both the first amendments and commerce clause of the U.S. constitution. IMDb also claims it separately violates federal law "because it imposes liability on IMDb based on factual content that is lawfully posted by its users." The website criticizes the state of California for passing the law, saying it has "chosen to chill free speech and undermine public access to factual information." IMDb says it is being unfairly targeted and that the law does not deal with the main cause of age discrimination. The case claims the law is both too broad -- as it includes all film professionals, rather than just those who could expect to be the target of age discrimination such as actors -- and too narrow, as it fails to impose the same restrictions on the "myriad other sources of the same information," such as Wikipedia, Google or specialist websites that list the birthdays of famous people. IMDb also says that subscribers to its paid professional service, IMDb Pro, have been able to edit or remove biographical details about themselves on the site since 2010.
fools
I was just wondering about this sort of thing and how it plagues our complex world.
Not only should they include their ages, they should also include their marital or dating status, so that we know who we could make a play for - at least those of us who are single }:-)
/sarc
Check out the profile head shot for any aging actor. They've got a studio portrait left over from about 40 years ago. Actors are the most shallow, appearance-obsessed people you will ever meet.
except when it's not? Too much about too little.
As a resident of California, who lives a short drive from Hollyweird, this law is no surprise. The second stupidest legislature in the US sucks Hollywood's dick at all times, in all ways.
If they want to make age discrimination in Hollywood illegal, they should pass a law making age discrimination in Hollywood illegal. And if that's what they wanted, that's what they'd do. This has nothing to do with actresses not getting roles when they're too old to pretend to be teenagers any more, and everything to do with pretending to care what the celebs want, while actually protecting the studios from public scorn for the age discrimination.
As noted, dates of birth are readily available to anyone who wants to know anyway. And producers and directors already know how old an actress is before they even consider casting them (if they care), and a professional makeup artist can make a 90 year old grandmother look like a teenager anyway with their magic bucket of spackle and trowel.
This law isn't intended to keep the industry from being able to discriminate based on age, it's intended to keep the public from realizing how widespread that discrimination is. This is to mask the age of actresses from the public, not the industry.
Those ages will still be available on the Wayback Machine page caches, in perpetuity. Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Of course casting agencies have knowledge of actors details, especially the famous ones. Actors only want to hide their age from the public.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
But the claim is pretty stupid as well: "we don't want to be forced to do it for free, but if the actors pay us a recurring fee they can do it"
They lost me on that alone.
fighting a California Law which is about Canadian/Spanish/Jupiterian actors.
"Magic bucket of spackle and trowel", I love it!
You did leave out the most powerful anti-aging magician: the plastic surgeon. Most actresses as they get older get that lion face with trout pout combo. Most don't look younger, they just look weirder. It starts tolook like the art of the mortician after a certain age.
Maybe they could list the age of the FACE separately....
lol, saw a photo of Olivia Newton-John in the newspaper. Made me think of this story. Her face is half the age of her hands....
IMDb also says that subscribers to its paid professional service, IMDb Pro, have been able to edit or remove biographical details about themselves on the site since 2010
The Court should Love that.
The only way to quasi-enforce anti-age-discrimination laws is to force studios to green light scripts with older lead characters. It is not age discrimination to pass over a 28-year-old, in favor of a 21-year-old, for the part of a 17-year-old.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Wow, a website that publishes my birthday and mother's maiden name, along with all my pets' names! Perhaps next year they will publish my social security and driver's license numbers. I mean, the public has the right to know, right???
I am currently being afflicted more and more with age. Treat it like any other medical fact.
# make clean sig
Ok, nobody will read this because it wasnt fristpsot, and probably too logical for most here. But come on:
IMDb also says that subscribers to its paid professional service, IMDb Pro, have been able to edit or remove biographical details about themselves on the site since 2010.
Seriously, that is why it is an issue. That's not remotely acceptable. If a website offering public accounts serves up data on an individual, they SHOULD be protected by law at least as far as giving them access to control that information about themselves. Charging them for a premium account just to edit their own biography should be downright criminal.
The concept embodied by this law might be creeping into society generally. I monitor fire department scanners and they no longer say the patient is "46 years old", instead they say "46 years OF AGE" as if the very word "old" itself is a Bad Thing. I've actually heard the dispatcher correct herself as she was about to say "age" as if she would get reprimanded by saying it.
Is this really a thing?
slashdot: A failed experiment.
In the name of all ugly people, I demand that they go further and ban discrimination based on looks. And weight. Or rank odor.
Gotta hide those underage stars...
Having worked at one time for a company that sold telephone directories and online advertising I can see this from the IMDB perspective. When I worked at the ad company we would have free listings for businesses as a service to the people that bought the directories and as an incentive for paid advertising from the businesses. If a business called in with a correction to factual information, such as we had the wrong phone number listed, or we misspelled the business name, then we'd fix it for free. We did this for free because it added value to our products.
If a business wanted their address removed then we wouldn't do that for free because that is something people can figure out on their own from another source and not listing it devalues the product for people paying for the directory. If they want information removed then we'd only do so at a price to make up for the loss in value of our product. It also creates a disincentive for trivial changes to a business listing, changing a listing takes a person time to perform which costs money. Just having someone answer the phone or look at an e-mail costs the ad company money, if they want access to the people that will answer the phone quickly and cater to their whimsy on how their listings look then they should pay for it.
I don't see the problem with IMDB requiring a paid subscription to their service to remove the age from a person listed. A person's age is factual information, available from other sources, and changing an entry in their database takes time and money which IMDB should be compensated for to provide that service.
IMDB is a business and list the names, ages, roles performed, etc. at no cost to them. The information they list for free is factual information, available elsewhere, and by making the listing they are in effect giving these people free advertising for their work in the hope to entice them to pay for more services. IMDB will not give false information on behalf of these people, that is not only unethical but also many times illegal. What they can do though is make additions to a listing, or hide certain factual information, but only if someone pays for it because that is where the real costs come in.
I believe IMDB is in the right here.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I don't see the problem with IMDB requiring a paid subscription to their service to remove the age from a person listed.
Address information is less likely to be prejudicial than the age of an actor, hence requiring payment to remove an actor's age, while possibly legal on free speech grounds, still has the scent of extortion.
The only way to quasi-enforce anti-age-discrimination laws is to force studios to green light scripts with older lead characters.
Such scripts are being greenlighted more these days. Helen Mirren has no problem getting work.
It is not age discrimination to pass over a 28-year-old, in favor of a 21-year-old, for the part of a 17-year-old.
Outside of big budget studio productions, in general, movies with female leads that are not pretending to be teenagers or in their 20s do not do as well at the box office. Especially the popcorn movies for the younger crowds, who just want wank material to begin with. The only way to even reduce age discrimination in Hollywood is to convince audiences to see movies starring older actresses.
"As a resident of California, who lives a short drive from Hollyweird, this law is no surprise. The second stupidest legislature in the US sucks Hollywood's dick at all times, in all ways."
What's odious about this law is that it only applies to the entertainment industry. Shouldn't it apply to all employees?
SFW.
Just go to Wikipedia and look it up there. It's not a commercial entertainment website.
Are these actors going to give the money back they earned, when they were young and beautiful and stepped into the places of the actors they replaced?
Are old football players also going to demand such a legislation? Old bathing suit models?
Some traits are a bit different. Sure, like a software engineer can grow wiser and better while getting older, an actor can too, that's not the issue. But we're dealing with a distribution industry here where the main profit demographic consists of young people. And it's human nature really, the bulk of our stories are about young people, told by the old people, and young beauty is something to celebrate.
99.9% of the actors are out of that very profitable distribution industry. They won't be all that good as the 0.1% that made it, through luck or talent, but many will too. And of the 0.1%, only very few make it very old in the industry, like Harrison Ford. And while they may be very good at what they do, they are not the proverbial rocket scientists.
Shouldn't they be very lucky that they had access to this distribution chain set up by others, which earned them many millions? What did they expect? That it would last forever? That it is their natural right? If you are an old actor, you can perfectly play in movies or even make your own, you just don't have access to that distribution industry, which makes stuff for young people. Crocodile tears.
convince audiences to see movies starring older actresses
which is just discriminating against young people, there are hundreds of hot young actresses who get scraps or nothing, while a few connected actresses hog the roles to feed their egos rather than face reality
That's not discriminating against young people, that's discriminating against people who can't act for shit. There are just as many old people who can't act who don't get move roles, either.
If IMDB loses this because it has the "scent of extortion" then I expect IMDB to respond within the law but also in a way to retaliate against those that want their ages hidden. For example, IMDB can merely respond to any request of removing the age by removing the entire biography page. IMDB is not obligated to provide these people with free advertising, just give them a choice, a complete bio which includes their age, no bio, or pay for a customized bio page. Or even make it simpler, no bio page or pay to have one created.
This is a bunch of bullshit, the argument for the removal of ages is to fight "subconscious", "inherent", or "inadvertent" agism. If they have a claim of demonstrable agism then go fight that. We cannot fight against something when we cannot even prove it exists.
I'm reminded of the crybullies that want transgendered actors to play transgendered roles when it was likely these same people that fought to keep an actor's status as gay, transgendered, etc. secret from the people recruiting them. Also, acting is about people pretending to be someone that they are not. Should it be illegal for an actor to portray a police officer in a movie unless they have actually attended a government police academy? If they didn't go to an academy they they aren't actually police officers, right? Gay actors have played straight men and vice versa for a very long time but now for some reason its an issue.
My guess on why stupid shit like this is coming up is that society has become so free from prejudice, discrimination, and antagonism that people will actively seek it out and see it when its not there.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Meanwhile somewhere between Valhalla and band-camp.. the rest of us must wrestle with the human condition. We cannot choose our age as we are defined by our family tree and its calendar-based definitions or our genome. If anonimizing our age was mainstream.. and defined by law then again by law... how would any company/country/entity decide to "green out" their top-end staff? I can see both sides of this argument.. but if Hollywood is trying to use law-based attributes for a person.. then how do the rest of us non-elite project ourselves for employment?
Hog the roles to feed their egos? They are not royals and we are not communists. Nevermind, I'm glad they kept you out.
The argument being made by the IMDB is extremely dangerous for the exercise of fundamental rights, and demonstrates contempt for the Bill of Rights. As is so often the case in US law, the lawyers representing IMDB have chosen to play a game of words, creating the illusion that their client is in the right - while both they and their client demonstrate their contempt for the rest of society and for the highest law of the land.
They essentially claim that their business - and hence no business - should be compelled to alter or delete factual information, and hence can publish this information whenever they wish without regard to consequences or fundamental rights.
This completely disregards the right to privacy, arising under the 9th Amendment. This right supersedes the claimed "public interest" in having this information published.
Further, if such a policy were to become law or established through precedent, it would also create all kinds of other problems not related to privacy, such as giving businesses the "right" to publish stolen trade secrets, unauthorized nude photos, and classified information.
The 1st Amendment specifically limits Congress. It does not in any way prevent the operation of the 9th Amendment, which is a higher legal authority than Congress.
The right to not be subject to age-based discrimination also arises under the 9th Amendment.
Preventing people from having access to somebody's age is the first defense against age-based discrimination. No business should be allowed to keep a person's age or date of birth in a database - or ask for this information on an application. Even medical businesses do not need to keep this information on a permanent basis - doctors can ask for this information when it is relevant. Most government agencies should not have this information either - and most government officials should not have access to it.
If you really wanted to fight against age discrimination, then let 12 year old work and smoke.
I don't see the problem with IMDB requiring a paid subscription to their service to remove the age from a person listed.
Address information is less likely to be prejudicial than the age of an actor, hence requiring payment to remove an actor's age, while possibly legal on free speech grounds, still has the scent of extortion.
This has nothing to do with extortion - an actor can't control their bio without a subscription. It's as simple as that. It's not pay to remove age information, it's pay to control all your information. Another key here is that IMDB doesn't do anything other than give you control of your info, likely after confirming it's really you via the payment system.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.