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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.
Fuck off. California is batshit crazy.
No need, 1st Amendment overrules California's silly law. The Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution (Article VI, Clause 2)
Being a spelling & grammar Nazi is a sign you do not poses the intelligence to contribute to the conversation
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.
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
Now, if IMDB was regularly posting incorrect birth dates, there might be some issue, but posting the date that celebrities were born isn't discrimination.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
They're not discriminating, though. Some users of their service might choose to discriminate based on the age data, but IMDB is in the clear here. Citing the first amendment is valid, too. In this case, it's freedom of the press.
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Racism and sexism are also a problem, which can be fought with a law forcing actors' pictures to be removed, and also their names.
Laws that limit freedom of expression are tyrannical in nature, and eventually no speech is free. Anti-Discrimination free speech laws are completely out of control "Dynamic" is prohibited in job postings, because ... it is ... code for "no black people". No, I am not making that shit up. Talk about racist bullshit, black people can't by dynamic?? WHAT???
The greatest threat to our liberties are people crying "There ought to be a law" and make it so.
Well Hollywood better put a goddamn end to the practice. I, for one, am sick and tired of Hollywood using actual children to portray children in movies and television. They should be using only actors above the age of 18.
Wikipedia wouldn't be in violation if TFS is correct. Namely, Wikipedia doesn't have a paid subscription and doesn't allow users to post their resume.
Wikipedia doesn't offer paid accounts. This is a targeted law intended to get that info removed from IMDB. It not only fails first amendment scrutiny, but also arguably fails equal protection scrutiny, as there's no rational reason why a company should be banned from publishing publicly available information merely because it also happens to offer paid accounts for people working in the industry; the law can't make meaningful progress towards a legitimate legislative goal as written, and appears to exist solely to screw over a single company.
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You are absolutely correct that the law can prohibit certain speech. Yet there are only three categories of speech that can be prohibited. 1. Obscenity 2. Fighting words and 3. Threats or incitement to violence. Let's see if this fits within any of them:
1. Reporting age is not obscene. Miller v. California (1973) requires that:
*The average person, applying "contemporary community standards", would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;
*The work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, "sexual conduct or excretory functions" specifically defined by applicable state law; and
*Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
The average person does not believe that discussions of age are prurient. Nor does reporting age involve sexual conduct or an excretory function. Finally, reporting age is of serious "scientific" value -- we do everything from condition certain privileges and benefits based upon age to discuss accomplishment with respect to age. Even if you dispute the latter point, it's an "and" test, so you would have to satisfy the other factors as well.
2. Reporting age is not fighting words. Cohen v. California (1971) and Snyder v. Phelps (2011) limit that doctrine.
*Cohen held that wearing a jacket that said "fuck the draft" was outside the doctrine because it was not a "personally abusive epithet";
*Snyder held that the Westboro Babptist Church's funeral protests were outside the doctrine because the speech was was not personal but instead public; and
*Most courts also require physical proximity between the speaker and the target -- and there's no such proximity here.
You're not going to get a jury to unanimously hold that reporting someone's numerical age is a personally abusive epithet. Reporting an age is also speech that is public rather than personal -- it is not made at or to the person, but the public at large. Finally, there's no proximity between IMDB and the person that could permit an immediate breach of the peace, i.e., a physical altercation.
3. Finally, reporting on age does not constitute a threat, whether personal or general. Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) requires that:
* the speaker intend to incite a violation of the law; and
* that the violation is both imminent and likely.
You're not going to get a jury to unanimously hold that reporting someone's numerical age is intended to create age discrimination. Also, there's no imminent, i.e., immediate, connection between reporting the age and any individual incident of age discrimination, nor is any such discrimination likely as opposed to merely being "possible."
No it's not. The issue here is whether the reporting fits within any exception to the first amendment. It does not.
You could have figured this out without much familiarity with the law. Publishing information itself is not "possibly discriminatory" -- it neither conditions nor denies a privilege or benefit based upon the person's age. You're arguing that someone else might use that information to discriminate -- but that's an entirely different and separate kettle of fish.
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.