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IMDb Ignores New Law Banning It From Publishing Actors' Ages Online, Cites Free Speech Violations (betanews.com)
Back in September, the state of California passed a new law that banned sites that offer paid subscriptions, and allow people to post resumes, from publishing individuals' ages. It's a law that has the potential to affect many sites, but it is the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) that hit the headlines. From a report: IMDb was told to remove actors' ages from the site by 1 January, 2017, but the site has failed to take any action. A full week into 2017, IMDb has not only chosen to ignore the new law, but has also filed a lawsuit in a bid to stop California from implementing Assembly Bill No. 1687. The reason? IMDb believes that the law is a violation of the First Amendment and it says the state has "chosen instead to chill free speech and to undermine access to factual information of public interest" rather than trying to tackle age-discrimination in a more meaningful way.
If they can forcefully display the silly localized movie titles when I set it to be English, I'm sure they will manage filtering the age field for California.
The First Amendment is the oldest.
Fuck off. California is batshit crazy.
IMDb believes that the law is a violation of the First Amendment and it says the state has "chosen instead to chill free speech and to undermine access to factual information of public interest" rather than trying to tackle age-discrimination in a more meaningful way.
While I don't actually care about the information in question, there is nothing private or sensitive about the age of actors or other public figures. They are public figures who have chosen a public life. If they don't like the consequences of that then they should chose another profession. There certainly is no compelling state interest worthy of such a law nor special group in need of protection. It's not as if their ages are some big secret to anyone who cares to find out. IMBd is probably right and there probably would win any first amendment related lawsuit should they chose to fight one.
...if just once, money/power didn't win out on this one.
-Styopa
I'm not that into following actors and actresses, and not much of a movie goer. That said, every time I have looked someone up they have a Wiki page which displays their birth date. Often with accompanying stories of childhood, family, and other personal notes. If the information is already available, why is it only IMDb that can't display it or calculate today-birth date = current age?
Going a bit further, acting already discriminates on all kinds of issues. Casting requires it. How popular would Buffy the Vampire Hunter been if the actress was 45 years old? How about the 40 year old virgin played by Sean Connery in his 70s? Like a whole lot of political issues coming out of CA, I question the sanity of this one.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
wikipedia is next, they post DOBs and ages.
It's not only age, but I think they shouldn't show the race or sex or height of actors.
Just show their picture and let the viewing casting director or public decide.
It looks like an old black woman to you?! Huh?! I see an tanned middle aged white man with moobs!
I mean really. Hey, we're casting a basketball movie! Yeah, that Peter Dinklage is a great choice to play the Kareem Abdul Jabbar!!!
What about posting natural hair color?
or actual weight?
or bust size?
How about promoting a culture that doesn't care about age and instead one that cares about ability?
I tell my children all the time, "I am not Congress. The First Amendment does not say, 'Dad shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech.'"
This is absolutely a violation of the first amendment. It is an example of the totalitarian nature of progressivism where in the name of "fairness" they will implement totalitarian regulations that take away all free speech. This is just the tip of the iceberg, they want to ban anything they deem to be "offensive", in violation of free speech rights. The only issue with ages is that there is a right for privacy but since these are actors this information is publicly available anyway, and otherwise as long as we are talking about information people volunteer which they can later delete, people have a right to do so. I can more sympathize with laws that have a process for sites to take down personal information of private persons, but thats not what this law is.
There should be a difference between private persons and public persons. In the age of Botox, it is very important to know the actual age of the people we vote for...
Wow, California passes the dumbest laws...
We are going to need a corollary for this. How about the Meryl Streep rule?
There is a simple work around. Publish the ages on the free version of the site and hide the ages if someone is on the subscription version of the site.
They had 30-year-olds playing high school students on Beverly Hills, 90210, and cast Anne Heche as a love interest to Harrison Ford when she was 29 and he was 56. I don't think any of them have a clue about age.
Nope, no sig
California has no business trying to regulate what sites on the Internet can/can't do. For that matter, neither do national governments.
Let's say I operate a site similar to IMDb, from here in Texas or some freewheeling island country somewhere. If California (or Germany, or Russia, or whereever) tries to regulate the content of that site, I will cheerily ignore them. They have no jurisdiction.
They're quite welcome to block my site, if they can get their ISPs to cooperate. But it's BS to specify what websites can/can't show.
Now, maybe IMDb operates out of California, so that's where "jurisdiction" comes in. If that's the case, IMDb needs to move the site (& dba location, but not necessarily office/staff location) out of state. Too bad, CA, you just regulated a business out of your state entirely!
Why are all actors "public figures who have chosen a public life"?
Because for whatever reason well known actors are considered celebrities in our culture worthy of adoration and fame. I don't pretend to understand why this should be the case but it is. It also is why they can in many cases get paid ludicrous sums of money - people are clearly willing to pay to see famous people do things. Well known actors get paid well because of their fame. Nobody cared about Tom Hanks before he became famous. Almost every actor is trying their hardest to gain notoriety and yet we're supposed to pretend that they aren't public figures? Spare me.
Are all civil servants "public figures"?
To a degree yes. If you want to work in the public space then we need to know who you are and a bit about your background. For transparency reasons if nothing else.
Certainly in Europe, everyone has a right to a private life.
No they don't. There are certain jobs that are inherently public in nature. Acting, politics, professional sports, and some others. The reason they get paid a lot of money is precisely because of their celebrity. You don't get elected if nobody knows who you are. You don't get big movie roles in most cases if you are a nobody. (and those that do don't remain nobodies) It's no different than anywhere else. Being a public figure is almost always a choice. They can chose a private life but that's probably not compatible with success in their chosen profession.
Oh, wow, yet another way for people to deny basic facts about themselves...
Should we not stop humoring such delusions? Whether the sufferers need active treatment may be subject to debate, but they certainly should not be further enabled...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I suspect that most famous actors' birthdays are public record and probably available on a number of sites including Wikipedia. In addition, if iMDb is not headquartered in California, would that law even apply?
This law was obviously a personal favor for some rich influential actor or actress. Stupid yes, but pretty harmless. Now when this starts happening in the White House with the new batshit crazy people who will be hanging out there, I don't expect then to have any such compunctions about their laws being harmless.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
This is absolutely ridiculous. Whining about not being hired because they *are* too old and assuming the problem goes away if nobody knows their age.
Newsflash: If you're an actress and you are not being hired because of your age, it's because you *look* too old. Of course a law could be made to hide that, too.
Thanks for your valued opinion.
Any reasons for that position?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
From the sounds of it, this law isn't targeting specifically IMDB and to me the intent of the law makes sense - prevent employment discrimination based on age. In Canada for example its illegal for a potential employer to ask your age or marital status.
From the bill's text:
This bill would prohibit a commercial online entertainment
employment service provider, as defined, that enters into a
contractual agreement to provide specified employment services to an
individual paid subscriber from publishing information about the
subscriber's age and would require the provider to remove any
information regarding the subscriber's age from any Internet Web site
under the provider's control if requested by the subscriber.
AFAICS, this would only prohibit IMDb from publishing age related information for entertainment industry individuals who have a contractual arrangement with them, i.e. subscribing to IMDb Pro to post resume, pictures, event dates, etc. Two things wrong with this. One is california seems to be stretching the definition of "employment" services. IMDb is defined as an employment service, like, say Monster.com, and so is required under exisiting laws to keep certain employee personal details private unless the prospective employee grants permission to reveal them to potential employers. A second thing is that the law would seem to pre-emptively prohibit IMDb from rewriting its service agreement to allow it to contractually publish age information of a subscriber since it potentially will open the subscriber to age-based discrimination.
Yes we have freedom of speech in America, but this freedom (like all good freedoms) comes with an implicit set of responsibilities to ensure that the freedom is used correctly. Unregulated freedom of speech is too dangerous to grant to ever whistle blower and movie database. Power needs to be divided with checks and balances. For example: the massive power that a movie producer has by indulging his ageist biases during casting is perfectly checked by forcing that producer to perform a separate google search to find a website operating outside of California to learn an actor's age. He might think he already knows the actor's approximate age, and cast Demi Moore to play the hot high school student without bothering to check her age, since she can't be more than ...22?
Just call it "overcoming the law" and it's all good under Comrade Trump.
Laws are for little people.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Really editors?!
"Fuck off. California is batshit crazy." has been rated "Insightful" ?
Maybe slashdot editors should fuck off.
and their silly little nonsense "laws"
... how old is Barbara Streisand?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
From WikiLeaks we learn that the rest of the world still doesn't understand how the internet works. Birth certificates are public record. Just because the Internet makes public mean public (it used to mean "public if you didn't have money to send a PI to search the records, private otherwise. Now it means really public."