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.

Comments

Only remove it for California

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Only remove it for California

[AmiMoJo]

Maybe not. Anti-discrimination laws are allowed by the constitution. Those laws can prohibit certain speech. That's well established and tested in court.

So the issue here is if publishing actor's ages against their wishes is possibly discriminatory. Some actors argue that knowing their age leads to discrimination when being cast. There is certainly a lot of evidence that this is true. If you accept that, you then have to ask if IMDB is involved in employment. I don't know enough about the industry to answer that.

The other angle here is transchronoism. I expect I'll be modded as a troll for even mentioning it, but the law appears to have been lobbied for by transchrono groups. Basically they want to decouple a person's physical age from how they live, somewhat like how transgender people differentiate between the physical state of their bodies and the gender they live as. This mostly involves rejecting stereotypes and social norms associated with age, and not assuming that because someone is 20 they are inexperienced or that because they are 70 they are conservative and want you to get off their lawn.

Considering how bad age discrimination is in the tech sector, it would make sense for people in that sector to support transchronoism. Just because you are 55 doesn't mean you can't write a mobile app in Go.

Re:Only remove it for California

[Anonymous Coward]

Racism and sexism are also a problem, which can be fought with a law forcing actors' pictures to be removed, and also their names.

Re:Only remove it for California

[memojuez]

Do the California Legislatures realize that his information is also on Wikipedia?

Born Mark Richard Hamill
September 25, 1951 (age 65)
Oakland, California, United States

Re:Only remove it for California

[xgerrit]

Publishing basic facts like: "Mark Hamill was born 25 September 1951 in Oakland, California, USA" shouldn't fall under anti-discrimination laws. In fact, while looking up Mark's birthday for this comment, I noticed that IMDB doesn't actually post the actor's age. Sure, you can subtract 1951 from 2016 to get his age, but IMDB only gives you his date of birth. This is a fact, not a judgement call.

The problem that many people outside the industry are not aware of, is that IMDB doesn't post facts: they post anything that people submit. So actors routinely submit fake (older) ages for the competition, and IMDB's policy is to leave the "fact" up until it's proven false. This requires the victim to send IMDB a copy of their driver's license or other proof, at which point IMDB updates their page to their actual age. So basically actors are being forced into revealing personal information they don't want to reveal, and IMDB is playing a fairly large part. This is what I believe the original lawsuit that was the inspiration for this law was about.

Only in California

[mi]

Basically they want to decouple a person's physical age from how they live, somewhat like how transgender people differentiate between the physical state of their bodies and the gender they live as.

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...