A win for truth



The actress who sued IMDb - the Internet Movie Database - for revealing her date of birth has lost her case in a Seattle court.

Huong (aka Junie) Hoang, a 41-year-old actor born in Saigon, launched her suit against IMDb.com, which is owned by Amazon, in October 2011. She originally sought $1 million in damages for loss of career opportunities stemming from the website's publication of her date of birth. This was later amended to unspecified compensatory damages and costs.

Ms Hoang had claimed she was born in 1978 when she submitted her information to the site, which hosts career information on many thousands of industry professionals. She was in fact born on July 16, 1971, a fact IMDb made public following a dispute with the actress over her entry.

The Guild and AFTRA argued that IMDb should allow actors to indicate an “age range” they could feasibly play.

Unfortunately for Ms Hoang and all the other rank-and-file actors out there, it was decided in a pre-trial hearing last week that this case would not consider such matters. No expert witnesses would be called to testify on the subject of ageism in Tinseltown (Ms Hoang's lawyers reportedly had nine witnesses lined-up to testify that IMDb had refused to take down birthdate details when requested).

That meant the issue at stake was simply whether or not IMDb had breached its contract with Ms Hoang by using her credit card data to determine her true age, and then publishing that information against her wishes.

In the end the jury sided with IMDb's argument that it was motivated purely by the “search for truth”.

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