Actress age claim against IMDb rejected

  • Published
Junie Hoang
Image caption,
Hoang initially provided the IMDb site with a false birth year

An actress who sued Amazon.com after her date of birth was posted on its Internet Movie Database has had her claim rejected by a jury in Seattle.

Huong Hoang, who goes by the stage name Junie Hoang, alleged that offers dried up after the database revealed her age.

IMDb argued it had the right to publish accurate data and that Hoang, 41, could not prove she lost out because of it.

According to the website, her credits include the 2011 title Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver.

The site, which was launched in the early 1990s and purchased by Amazon in 1998, continues to post Ms Hoang's date of birth on her profile page.

In court documents filed anonymously in 2011, Amazon and its movie database subsidiary were accused of breach of contract, fraud, violation of privacy and consumer protection laws.

Parent company Amazon was dismissed as a defendant before the two-day trial, which concluded on Thursday.

The database's stance drew criticism in 2011 from two acting unions, who accused the site of "facilitating age discrimination".

During the trial, though, the site's attorneys said IMDb was not responsible for the actions taken by people who read their profiles.

Image caption,
Junie Hoang's IMDb profile continues to list her true date of birth - 16 July 1971

Ms Hoang, who had been seeking $1m (£650,000) in damages, had initially provided the site with a false birth year that reduced her stated age by seven years.

When she asked for that information to be removed, the site used a public records search to discover her true date of birth and published it against her objections.

Speaking after the trial, Ms Hoang said she had hoped to make the database change its policy.

"I knew it was a problem not just for me but for anyone else who had their age on their profile," she told the Associated Press.

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