IMDb Tells California It Will Continue to Publish Actors’ Ages
I’m siding with iMDB on this, it’s the people who discriminate based on age who need to be punished, and right now most corporations regularly and blithely layoff 50+ individuals to reduce overhead with no consequence, and many discriminate in hiring.
With age discrimination rife in Hollywood, California wanted to do something about it. That meant introducing a new law that didn’t actually target the root cause of the problem — i.e. penalizing the people who engage in the practice — but instead stopped websites from publishing an individual’s age. IMBb, the movie listing website owned by Amazon, was told in September that it would need to remove ages and birthdates of performers by January 1st, 2017. It’s been a week since the deadline passed and IMDb hasn’t done a thing.
On Thursday, IMDb issued a court filing asking judges to introduce a preliminary injunction that would stop the Attorney General of California from enforcing California Assembly Bill 1687. It argues that instead of tackling unfair industry practices, the state had “chosen instead to chill free speech and to undermine access to factual information of public interest.” The company believes it violates the First Amendment, and that should be enough for it to not be enforced.
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