Huang Hoang’s attorneys have amended their complaint against IMDb, essentially trying to reinstate the claim Judge Pechman threw out last month by saying the same thing in a different way. Your interpretation may differ. The details are here.
Really a non-update for now, but it could become meaningful if Judge Pechman buys it.
March 30, 2012:
U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman has rejected IMDb’s motion to dismiss Ms. Hoang’s case against it, so as of now the lawsuit will go ahead; but… the fraud claim is out, because of a lack of supporting details in the complaint; and gone too is the claim that IMDb violated the state of Washington’s Privacy Law, because this only applies to the interception of private communications without consent.
And the $1 million punitive damages claim is out
What’s left? Breach of contract, based on IMDb Pro’s privacy policy’s promise that it will “carefully and sensibly” manage customer information.
Defendants fail to show that plaintiff gave permission to use her information … While this allegation does not contain specific factual information about how Defendants allegedly used her information to obtain her birth date, it is sufficient to provide the Defendants fair notice of the basis for Plaintiff’s claims -Judge Pechman
Ms. Hoang can sue only for actual damages, which will require her to demonstrate specific roles she lost because her actual age was made public.
March 4, 2012
Thanks to some clarification, Ms. Hoang’s claim that IMDb used her credit card to derive her date of birth makes more sense: When she joined IMDb Pro, under her professional name Junie Hoang, she used her credit card, which of course was under her legal name of Huong Hoang. That enabled IMDb to link Junie and Huong, and they were able to get Huong Hoang’s birthdate through public databases.
Very simple. And, it would seem, probably not illegal.
That being said, IMDb explicitly denies this is how they found her birthdate, though they refuse to elaborate.
February 7, 2012: Actress Suing IMDb For Revealing Her Age Gets a Trial Date
Junie Hoang’s lawsuit against Amazon (which owns IMDb) is scheduled to begin on January 7, 2013. Discovery is expected to last through August of this year, followed by various motions.
By the time the trial (expected to run no more than two days) ends, each side will undoubtedly run up legal fees well in excess of Ms. Hoang’s $1 million claim.
Amazon’s incentive for not settling the claim is obvious: it could open up the door for countless similar lawsuits. Hoang’s incentive… well, assuming he attorneys are taking this case on contingency, it’s a no-lose scenario for an actress who was previously best-known for playing a supporting character in Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver.
Her attorneys’ incentive… well, presumably they’re counting on both winning the case and having the judge order Amazon to pay the plaintiff’s legal costs in addition to damages.
IMDb, for its part, has not acknowledged that they got Hoang’s date of birth from her credit card information (which seems like a lot of trouble to go through for the sake of a more complete listing for a relatively obscure actress) — but even if they did, IMDb’s privacy policy– to which Hoang agreed when she signed up for IMDb Pro — gives them the right to use information provided by members to collect data including “your age and gender.”
January 6, 2012: Goodnight Saigon: The Case of the Actress Suing IMDb Gets More Confusing
This article implies (though doesn’t absolutely state) that IMDb acknowledges that they obtained June Hoang’s date of birth from her credit card information. This is Ms. Hoang’s accusation as well — but seriously, would IMDb go through this much trouble (skirting the law, at the very least) to obtain the birthdate of an actress whose most significant role to date was ?
Assuming they did get the birth date from the credit card, or in any way other than from Ms. Hoang herself: how did they know she was born in Saigon? That had to have come from information somehow provided by Ms. Hoang, or at the very least not from the credit card information
And the place of birth itself is problematic: Ms. Hoang was claiming to have been between the ages of 26 and 33 (in 2011), meaning she’d been born between 1978 and 1985; and Saigon ceased to exist in 1976.
(Of course, this can be explained by Ms. Hoang, born in 1971, simply being too careless to keep her story straight)
January 6, 2012: In order to refile her lawsuit against IMDb, Huang Hoang (known professionally as Junie Hoang) has publicly identified herself.
Just for the record, her three most recent roles — before IMDb allegedly harmed her career by revealing her true age — were an unnamed nurse in I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant, “Group Mary” (a very minor role) in The Custom Mary, and Sandy (a supporting role) in Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver.
December 23, 2011: Earlier today, a U.S. District Court judge told “Jane Doe,” a 40-year-old actress who’s suing IMDb (and its parent Amazon.com) for $1 million for publishing her actual age, that in order to proceed with her lawsuit, she must reveal her name. The actress claims she fears blacklisting if her identity is revealed, but the judge ruled that “the injury she fears is not severe enough to justify permitting her to proceed anonymously.”
Ms. Doe has until January 6 to either refile her lawsuit using her actual name, or drop the case.
Update: IMDb explains here why Ms. Doe shouldn’t fear blacklisting
November 14, 2011: Last week Amazon.com, the owner of IMDb, asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit filed by a 40-year-old actress who claimed IMDb harmed her career by listing and refusing to delete her birthdate. According to Amazon’s attorneys, “Plaintiff’s attempt to manipulate the federal court system so she can censor IMDb’s display of her birthdate is selfish, contrary to the public interest and a frivolous abuse of this court’s resources.” They also claim that the actress asked them to falsify her birthdate.
They don’t suggest that this all might be a publicity stunt, but somebody should mention the possibility.
Amazon.com doesn’t explain where IMDb got her birth date in the first place, The actress insists they hacked into her account information from the credit card she’d used to pay for her IMDbPro membership, which seems like a lot of work to get some information about an actress nobody’s really ever heard of.
(Until she goes public and reveals herself as the plaintiff and Champion of Actresses’ Rights — just saying)
In addition to lying about her birth date, this actress had also used an Americanized stage name, which she said helped her get jobs. An attempt to hide the fact that she’s Asian-American? Did she feel that an Asian name would keep her from being offered auditions but once she showed up she was able to get the parts anyway?
October 20, 2011: A 40-year-old Asian-American Texas-based actress is suing Amazon.com (as “Jane Doe,” despite the amount of personal information she’s revealed) because its subsidiary, IMDb (Internet Movie Database) published her date of birth against her wishes and refuses to remove it. This, she claims, violates their own user’s agreement — and, she says, they could only have gotten her birth date by illegally deriving it from her credit card number when she signed up for IMDbPro, IMDB’s premium service for members of the TV and film industries.
Or, of course, they could have gotten the information from Ms. Doe herself when she first signed up for IMDb. Hard to say, because we have no way of knowing how specific IMDb is about Ms. Doe’s date of birth — but it seems a bit more reasonable, since hacking into Ms. Doe’s credit card information seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through for a woman who’s apparently so little known that she can be self-described as a 40-year-old Asian-American Texas-based actress and still file a lawsuit as Jane Doe.
Ms. Doe argues in her lawsuit (asking for $75,000 in actual damages and $1 million in punitive damages) that revelation of her true age (she’s been claiming to be younger) hurts her professionally because not only won’t producers offer her “younger” roles anymore, but — since she looks much younger than her years — she isn’t offered roles for 40+ women.
This article, and all articles on this site, are
© 2012 by Bill Bickel unless otherwise noted.
Well, there is a tort of publicly revealing private information (in California, at least, as most of the cases in the textbook involved Hollywood personalities). Unlike slander and libel, truth is NOT a defense. But information contained in documents available to the public is exempt.
Jane probably has a point, but her complaint is with Hollywood’s casting directors, not IMDb.
I doubt it.Ages can be figured out from public records like birth certificates.
And her lawsuit evidently confirms that the age they’ve listed for her is correct. She could have bought some time by saying, “That’s not my real age.” Or given a different age when she signed up for IMDb.
Or she could do what the birthers did, and make up a fake birth certificate with a younger age on it.
I thought it was President Obama who made up a fake birth certificate. I just can’t keep track anymore.
If she had claimed a different age in court documents, she would have not only lost her case, but been subject to criminal sanctions, as well.
If you mean she should have just sent a letter to IMDb disputing the date they had (presumably based on public records) then the result would have been “provide documents and we’ll change it”, which she would have been unable to do.
Look, it’s a bummer that you’re not 25 any more, Ms. Doe, I get that, because neither am I. I guess it’s a double-bummer that you want to work in an industry that has so little use for people your age… if you can’t find work in the field you want, it’s time to pick a different career.
Off subject, but it was Hillary Clinton who first suggested that Obama was not born in America, and he perpetuated the rumors by refusing to release his birth certificate.
OTOH, John McCain really was born in another country (Panama).
I suspect that the lawsuit would hinge on whether her birthdate is available from public records – California vital statistics records are public, but I’m not sure about Texas records.
At any rate, she’s right that age is a major impediment to getting jobs for actresses who haven’t made a name yet. It’s almost as important as being short, underweight, and extremely narrow-shouldered.
Welcome to the Streisand effect.
Well, yes and no, Brent: in this case, I wonder whether the publicity can do anything but help her. I mean consider the fact that currently she’s living in Texas, meaning she really doesn’t have what you’d call a thriving career.
Once again, the simple “yes/no” options are too narrow. Here’s another vote for “she has a case only if the information was derived from a private source”.
Kilby, the poll is more general, not specifically relating to Ms. Doe. And I considered “only if the information was derived from a private source” to be irrelevant, since the reality is, you can legally find out this information about anybody if you put enough effort into it.
Isn’t much of IMDB crowd-sourced? The information could have come from anyone. As a customer of IMDB, she has a certain reasonable expectation of privacy, but as a public figure in its database – I can’t see how she has any. If you don’t want to be famous, I think you have to start by not trying to become famous.
I’ve answered “yes” to the poll because the sad fact is that there is agism in Hollywood and it affects the women. Many actresses complain of good roles drying up the moment someone finds out they’ve turned 40 – no matter how good they still look. So yes, “outing” an actress’s age could affect her chances of getting the parts she wants, and imdb.com should respect that – considering it makes a living in the same industry, as it were.
So, you want IMDb to go along with Hollywood’s system of discriminating against women?
I see a lot of votes for “no” and a lot of comments for “yes”, so I’ll throw my support behind the vocal minority. While we don’t have enough facts, it would seem that revealing someone’s age is an invasion of privacy. It’s also needless, as if she didn’t provide or wish for her age to be revealed, then someone went a little too far for whatever reason.
It doesn’t sit right with me. The obvious answer is “no, this is a stupid case”, but that thought is what first made me look at the question deeper.
Okay, let’s throw this into the mix: I’m applying for an editorial position, and I tell them I graduated from Columbia Journalism School. I didn’t, but I sincerely believe that where I went to school more than 30 years is irrelevant to my qualifications because I’ve been writing professionally since I was 19 and I’ve been an editor since 2001.
Is this any different from a 40-year-old actress pretending to be 35 to get an acting job?
There’s lying by omission, and lying by affirmative statement. If you say you went to a school, but don’t say you actually graduated, you’re in a gray area if you ever in your life visited the campus. If you don’t say anything at all about the school, but you wear the tie, know the secret handshake, and have the big “#1″ foam finger for the football team, you’re in a gray area, but you didn’t actually claim to go there, but are kind of suggesting that you did.
Some jobs (law and journalism among them) place a higher premium on accurate, factual, non-misleading statements, and so their gray areas are much smaller. In Oregon, it is a crime to claim that you have a degree for employment purposes if it doesn’t come from one of the schools approved by the ODA, and a politician got bit by that and had to step down. Oregon also once elected Wes Cooley as representative (from the red part of the state, for you people who see everything through a political lens.)
This whole ageism thing is like the don’t ask don’t tell. It isn’t workable and the sooner it goes away, the better for all the actresses. Of course, that won’t happen if they’re all still pretending to be younger than they are.
It starts when they’re young. Because of time-limits for minors who work as actors, most “teenagers” on TV and in the movies are played by people over 18, sometimes WELL over 18. Some play teenagers well into their 20′s, and in some cases, 30′s!
Also, not ALL of the blame lies with Hollywood itself. Hollywood is built on the premise of “give the people what they want”, and what they want is young attractive people. People who are neither of these things have trouble finding work, because the public (us!) don’t want to watch them. How many TV shows are there about a group of friends in their 20′s? OK, now, how many TV shows are there about a group of friends in their 40′s?