US court rules in favour of IMDb

A tug of war around actor ages published on IMDb drags on…

A California law seeking to remove information from IMDb has again been deemed unconstitutional, this time by a federal appeals court.

The Amazon-owned site sued the California Attorney General in 2016 after a ruling that would require IMDb to remove the ages or birth dates upon request by IMDBPro members.

SAG-AFTRA has argued the site facilitates age discrimination, but the site argues the effect is unconstitutional censorship of free speech.

On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals found that reducing incidents of age discrimination is a compelling government interest but the state failed to explore less restrictive and more narrowly tailored methods that would address the issue without compromising free speech.

The appeals court found the content in IMDb profiles isn’t commercial speech, doesn’t facilitate illegal conduct and doesn’t implicate privacy concerns. Therefore government restriction of such content is subject to strict scrutiny.

SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris said, “We’re very disappointed by the decision, but it changes nothing about SAG-AFTRA’s commitment to change IMDb’s wrongful and abusive conduct.

“Neither I nor our members will stop speaking out until this outrageous violation of privacy used to facilitate discriminatory hiring ends.”

Source: Hollywood Reporter