Former Trump Lawyer Facing Sanctions In Michigan Now Saying The Things She Said Were Opinions Are Actually Facts

from the chronic-self-inflicted-foot-injuries-now-traveling-to-mouth-area dept

The Kraken is on the move!

Former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell -- last seen being sued by a voting machine maker after making (and filing) a bunch of baseless claims about a "stolen" election -- is headed to Detroit, Michigan. There will be some more Michigan-focused courtroom action, but it won't be Powell playing offense.

Sidney Powell and other attorneys who defended former President Trump’s false claims about the 2020 presidential election have been summoned for a sanctions hearing in a Michigan federal court.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Linda Parker ordered the attorneys to appear at a hearing on July 6, according to court documents.

This case for sanctions has been building for months, beginning late last year after Powell (and several others) filed a bunch of BS lawsuits in Michigan courts seeking to overturn election results. The state's sanctions complaints were compiled with the inadvertent assistance of Powell herself, whose response to Dominion's defamation lawsuit was to assert that no reasonable person would believe the outlandish claims she made about the voting machine maker.

Unfortunately for Powell, that group of "reasonable" people apparently included the judges presiding over lawsuits she filed late last year. Claiming you're really in the business of dispensing hyperbole and rhetoric may play well when faced with defamation allegations, but it plays much worse in courts where you're the plaintiff trying to convince a judge these same statements are potentially verifiable facts.

Even with all of this going on, Powell just won't quit making things worse for herself. As Jacob Sullum reports for Reason, Powell recently attended a conference in Dallas, Texas where she claimed all the stuff she just finished telling Dominion was nothing more than heated rhetoric mostly free of facts is actually a bunch of facts she stands behind.

"I don't think they realized that some of us litigators were going to catch on and hold their feet to the fire and expose what really happened," Powell said during the "For God & Country: Patriot Roundup" gathering on Memorial Day weekend, which also featured prominent election conspiracy theorists such as former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Florida congressman Allen West, and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R–Texas). She predicted that Dominion's lawsuit will be dismissed because "we meant what we said, and we have the evidence to back it up." If the lawsuit proceeds, she added, "then we will get discovery against Dominion, and we will be on offense."

That's not what she told the court. Playing defense against Dominion, Powell said:

[I]t was clear to reasonable persons that Powell’s claims were her opinions and legal theories on a matter of utmost public concern…

But in front of this crowd of conspiracy theorists and Trump torch-carriers, Powell claims to have the "evidence" to back up her "opinions and legal theories." Well, we'll see how that plays out when she returns to court to continue facing Dominion's lawsuit. We'll also see what effect being sanctioned for filing bullshit lawsuits in Michigan will have on the lawsuit she didn't file. Chances are, none of this will work out well for Powell. Trying to have it both ways just isn't going to work.

Filed Under: defamation, facts, opinion, sanctions, sidney powell, the kraken

Narcos Defeats Yet Another Silly Copyright Lawsuit

from the just-the-facts dept

While Netflix's Narcos has certainly been a hit show for the streaming platform, it's still a bit surprising that there has been so much intellectual property strife surrounding the show. To date, the most notable IP dispute has been Pablo Escobar's brother's attempt to sue Netflix for one billion dollars. As Netflix was having Narcos actors pretend to threaten to shoot the public for pirating the show, Roberto Escobar was busy making no headway with his lawsuit, eventually dropping it.

But another lawsuit had been filed against Narcos as well, by a famous Colombian journalist who had a years-long affair with El Jefe. Virginia Vallejo wrote about her time with Escobar and the affair she had with him in a memoir, scenes from which were depicted in the Netflix series. She went on to claim that such depictions constituted copyright infringement. Unfortunately for her, a Miami judge ruled for Narcos producers on summary judgement, finding that the Netflix show had depicted only facts that were similar to Vallejo's accounts, while the rest of the depictions in two scenes the journalist calls out were not substantially similar to her retelling in her book.

The ruling itself is a rather, ahem, steamy read as far as these things go. The reason for that is that one of the scenes in question is a bedroom scene involving a revolver being used in new and creative ways.

Defendants argue that the only similarities are: (1) Plaintiff is blindfolded with a black blindfold; (2) Escobar uses a gun to caress her neck and chest while speaking in a menacing tone; and (3) she appears aroused. Defendants maintain that these similarities are not protectable because they are nothing more than facts; merely because Plaintiff’s Memoir was the first time that these facts were made public does not make them protectable.

Plaintiff contends that there are additional similarities, including the elegant bedroom, thatboth Plaintiff and the Velez character are bound to furniture, Plaintiff and Velez are at the mercy of Escobar, Escobar engages in aggressive banter with Plaintiff and Velez and both respond in a submissive manner, Plaintiff and Velez are not afraid of Escobar, Escobar grabs both by the hair,Escobar touches their bare skin with a gun as sexual foreplay, and Plaintiff and Velez throw their heads back sighing and moaning with pleasure. However, comparing Plaintiff's Memoir and the Narcos Revolver Scene establishes that not all of these similarities actually exist and the similarities that do exist are ideas and facts.

The second scene in question is ruled on in the same way. Essentially what's happening here is that Vallejo claims that Netflix's depiction is so similar to her account in her book that it's copyright infringement. Netflix does not argue that copying didn't occur, but claims all examples of copying were of factual information, buttressed by Vallejo's claims that the accounts in her book are all factually true. The rest of the makeup of the scenes, the staging, scenery, exact dialogue, and feel of the scene all contain substantial differences with Vallejo's book.

It's hard to see how the world could operate had the court ruled any differently. Is the expectation that an artistic work telling the story of an historical figure can't retell the factual occurrences surrounding that figure if some third party already put those facts down in a book somewhere? Were that the case, depictions of historical figures could almost certainly not exist.

Filed Under: copyright, facts, idea expression dichotomy, narcos, pablo escobar, streaming, virginia vallejo

FBI Director Chris Wray Needs To Shut The Fuck Up About Encryption

from the SHOW-YOUR-WORK dept

FBI Director Chris Wray is still hoping to sell Americans on trading away their security for a little bit of law enforcement convenience. Wray believes the only way the FBI and other agencies will ever keep up with criminals is to do away with encryption. The "going dark" campaign may have started with Jim Comey, but Wray has proven to be every bit as obtusely tenacious as his predecessor.

Wray's latest anti-encryption pep talk occurred at the RSA Conference. CNET reports the FBI director delivered another misguided, but impassioned, speech in defense of making everything worse for everyone but the FBI.

Encryption should have limits. That's the message FBI Director Christopher Wray had for cybersecurity experts Tuesday. The technology that scrambles up information so only intended recipients can read it is useful, he said, but it shouldn't provide a playground for criminals where law enforcement can't reach them.

"It can't be a sustainable end state for there to be an entirely unfettered space that's utterly beyond law enforcement for criminals to hide," Wray said during a live interview at the RSA Conference, a major cybersecurity gathering in San Francisco.

Wray can't honestly define where encryption should stop and law enforcement access begin. All he can do is claim the status quo isn't working because sometimes the FBI can't get into a seized device. But how many times is encryption actually bringing an investigation to a halt? That's something Wray won't talk about, even though he has access to this information.

What CNET charitably calls a "back and forth" conversation between Chris Wray and tech companies is actually nothing more than Wray complaining about encryption and ignoring everything he hears back from the companies that would be affected.

Wray needs to take his anti-encryption ball and go home. Not because I disagree with him, but because the FBI has handled this "conversation" disingenuously since day one. The "going dark" narrative hasn't been backed by evidence or facts. The FBI misrepresented the number of uncrackable devices it had in its possession for more than three years. Once legislators started demanding proof, the FBI discovered it had no idea how many devices it had on hand.

No further details have been delivered by the FBI, but it's safe to assume the original estimate of 8-9,000 devices is actually less than a quarter of that. But we don't know what the actual count is because the FBI has yet to issue an updated number.

The FBI said it would recount the devices and get back to us. As of March 6th, it has been 281 days since the FBI started replacing statements of 8,000+ locked devices with asterisks and footnotes. This is why Wray needs to shut his mouth. Until his agency delivers the real number of locked devices, we don't need to entertain his anti-encryption dreams. If he and his agency are unwilling to have a real conversation about device encryption -- one containing actual facts about locked devices and their impact on investigations -- no one should grant him or his comments any credibility.

Filed Under: chris wray, doj, encryption, facts, fbi, going dark

Appeals Court Says You Can Copyright A Collection Of Facts... If You Leave Out A Few

from the wait,-what? dept

The 9th Circuit is at it again with copyright. For whatever reason, when the 9th Circuit gets a copyright case, it frequently seems to mess everything up about it. This latest case -- Experian v. Nationwide Marketing Services -- is no exception. One of the most famous, and most important, copyright cases to hit the Supreme Court was the Feist case. We've mentioned it many times before. The short summary is that a phone book publisher had inserted a few "fake" names and numbers into its book to try to catch copycats. It found one, and sued for copyright infringement. The Supreme Court rejected it, noting that copyright does not apply to facts, and clearly rejecting any notion that mere "sweat of the brow" in collecting facts gives you a copyright.

This was good. But... there was one part of the ruling that still left open the potential for mischief, and appeals courts have been making mischief in that loophole ever since. Here's the issue: 17 USC 103 allows for copyright in "compilations," though it notes this copyright "only extends to" the creative input in making the compilation, and not the underlying works (whether they are covered by copyright or not). The common sense explanation of this is that if, say, you're putting together (with the proper licenses) a "best of..." CD (let's say "Best of the 70's"), then you can have a copyright on that compilation. Not in the underlying songs, which you've licensed properly, but in the creativity in choosing the 7, 12, 15 or whatever number of songs, and the order you've placed them in. That requires some creativity, and it may be enough to get a fairly narrow copyright.

In Feist, the question was whether or not putting together all the phone numbers and names was covered by that compilation setup, and the Supreme Court said no. A mere collection of facts has no creative element and thus can't be considered a compilation for the purpose of establishing a new copyright. That's good. But the opinion bent over backwards to suggest that lots of other compilations of data might have the requisite creativity. And... far too many courts have taken the Supreme Court up on that proposition, potentially eviscerating the valuable promises of Feist.

That takes us to this case. Here, Experian, as you're probably aware, is one of the massive consumer data services, and one of its databases, the ConsumerView Database, contains around 250 million records about individual consumers, pairing together their names and addresses. Names and addresses. This seems pretty damn similar to Feist's names and phone numbers, right? Well, an upstart data collection company, Nationwide Marketing Services (or Natimark) somehow got its hands on a database called the National Consumer List, with about 200 million records. At some point, it tried to sell that database to Experian (apparently, the whole market is somewhat incestuous in passing around and selling data back and forth between each other, using different databases to mix and match and keep things up to date).

Experian analyzed the data from the Natimark NCL list and found that it was way too close to its own ConsumerView Database (CVD), finding it 97% the same (a later analysis said 94%). Thus, this lawsuit. To me, this seems like a pretty clear application of Feist. Names and addresses is factual information, there's no copyright in the compilation, toss the case. And that's what the district court originally found. Experian tried again, now using trade secrets. Once again, the district court said "nuh-uh." The case was then appealed to the 9th Circuit Appeals Court... who really messed it up and decided that, yes, Experian can have a copyright in the compilation.

The opinion goes through a long list of other data compilation cases, with rulings on either side, and finally says there's enough creativity in the collection. Why? For two key reasons. First, Experian's database left some people out -- such as the elderly. By not including the "entire relevant universe known to it," the court concludes that it has made creative choices in what not to include. Second, Experian employees had to make some decisions about which address goes with which people. Specifically, in compiling these databases from multiples sources they may find that there are multiple possible addresses for an individual, and Experian employees had to choose which address to put down. And that, in the minds of the 9th Circuit, is the level of creativity necessary to get a copyright.

Experian’s selection process in culling data from multiple sources and selecting the appropriate pairing of addresses with names before entering them in the database involves a process of at least minimal creativity. The listings are compiled by first collecting and comparing multiple sources, and then sorting conflicting information through the creation of business rules that Experian created to select from among the conflicts. As the Fifth Circuit said in Mason, selection is sufficiently creative when the compiler makes “choices . . . independently . . . to select information from numerous and sometimes conflicting sources.”

But... that seems an awful lot like bringing back the "sweat of the brow" argument. It's not creative choices being made here. It's choices around which information is correct -- i.e., factual.

The exclusion of elderly people also seems like a bizarre factor on which to judge "creativity."

Experian’s employees, like the compiler in Key Publications, also exclude information they deem irrelevant to the interests of Experian’s marketing clients, information such as business addresses, and the names and addresses of the very elderly and incarcerated. See 945 F.2d at 513. Such exclusions indicate some “thought and creativity in the selection” of names and addresses to include in the database, id., which indicates the “modicum of creativity necessary to transform mere selection into copyrightable expression.”

But, under that standard, it would seem that Feist itself was decided incorrectly. Remember, the whole reason why Feist became a case in the first place was because the original phone book had added fake names and numbers. How is that any different than choosing to exclude names of old people? Indeed, you could make an argument that adding in fake numbers requires more creativity than excluding factual data on old people.

Under this standard, it seems quite easy to basically wipe out Feist entirely. If you want a copyright on your big collection of purely factual data, drop a few entries that no one needs, and claim that was your creative choice.

In this case, Experian still probably isn't thrilled with the result, since after establishing that Experian can have a copyright in the compilation, it then says Experian failed to actually prove infringement. The court notes that to prove infringement of a compilation, you need to show that basically the entire compilation was copied. But, here that was not shown.

In this case, the Experian database that was allegedly infringed was one updated through September 2011. Neither that entire database nor Natimark’s entire, allegedly infringing database was introduced into evidence, and perhaps as a practical matter could not have been. Nevertheless, there must be sufficient evidence of content to make a fair comparison....

Experian contends that it has established a triable issue as to copying by offering the opinion of an expert that the match rate between Experian files and the allegedly infringing Natimark files is higher than the match rate between the files of Experian and one of its legitimate licensees. Experian asks us to hold that it has presented circumstantial evidence of copying sufficient to send the case to a jury. It fails to cite any authority from this circuit or elsewhere permitting infringement to be established on the basis of circumstantial evidence, and in the absence of any direct comparisons.

It also points out that Experian's own evidence shows that the Natimark database was only 80% the size of Experian's, and that's not enough to show that the entire compilation was copied. So that dooms Experian's copyright argument. But, still, the decision that the copyright exists in the first place is quite troubling and could create all sorts of trouble. It will enable a fake "sweat of the brow" right, which should be cause for concern. This could have all been avoided if everyone recognized that compilation copyrights shouldn't be for merely collecting giant tubs of factual data, but compilations of copyright-protected material. Unfortunately, Congress (perhaps stupidly) included the term "data" in its definition of compilation. It would be nice if Congress rectified this mess by deleting that word from the definition, but there's little chance of that happening any time soon...

As we were just discussing, the US's lack of a "database right" as found in Europe, has actually been a huge boon to innovation, especially on the internet. This ruling could create some problems for that by establishing a de facto database right, if the initial compiler takes a few meaningless steps to establish the modicum of "creativity" necessary to satisfy the court here. And, of course, it's still not clear why adding in fake info doesn't qualify, while deleting a few entries does.

For what it's worth, the court also overturned the lower court's ruling on trade secrets, saying that there's enough evidence to say a jury should determine whether or not Experian's database is covered by trade secret law. This is... also bad, but wading into the huge mess that is trade secret law is something that will probably cause me to start banging my head repeatedly on the wall, and I really have no desire to do that right now. Perhaps another time.

Filed Under: 9th circuit, compilations, copyright, creativity, data, database rights, facts, feist
Companies: experian, natimark

Screen Actors Guild Tells Court There's Nothing Unconstitutional About Curbing IMDB's Publication Of Facts

from the beneficiaries-of-free-speech-protections-ask-for-less-free-speech dept

Because ageism is allegedly rampant in Hollywood, California legislators have decided to address the problem head on not at all. Instead of enforcing on-the-books laws against employment discrimination, the legislature -- backed by the Screen Actors Guild -- has decided some of the First Amendment has to go. It has crafted a new law to fight ageism in Hollywood studios… by targeting a popular movie database. In California, A + B = WTF.

The law -- currently blocked by an injunction -- forbids third-party sites with paid subscribers from publishing certain facts about actors and actresses. The only fact at issue is their age. And, despite lawmakers pretending the stupid, unconstitutional law targets a variety of websites, it's really only having an effect on one: IMDb.

This failure of a law stems from a failure of a lawsuit brought by actress Junie Hoang, who blamed her lack of starring roles on IMDb publishing her real age. She wanted $1 million in damages, apparently expecting IMDb to subsidize her next 500 years of denied acting opportunities. (Discovery during the suit revealed Hoang made less than $2000/year from acting.)

The Fail Train rolls on with the Screen Actors Guild offering its full-throated approval of First Amendment limitations, as Elizabeth Nolan Brown reports.

In its own motion, SAG-AFTRA complained that IMDB "contends it has an absolute First Amendment right to disseminate the ages of everyone in Hollywood, consequences be damned, and no matter how much or little value such expression has in the marketplace of ideas." But "so long as the communication of the age of persons in the entertainment industry writ large facilitates illegal age discrimination, such expression may be regulated consistent with the First Amendment even though specific communications might not be discriminatory."

Note that the Actors Guild doesn't claim that IMDb publishes age information that's false, nor that it publishes true information obtained in an illegal manner. Rather SAG-AFTRA asserts that IMDb somehow has a legal responsibility to help actors obtain work by concealing their ages; that the state has the ability to judge what kinds of content have "value" in the "marketplace of ideas"; and that information of "little value" can be banned.

The motion is filled with terrible arguments. But considering its conceit, where else could it go? When you start with the premise the best fix for ageism at movie studios is targeting a third-party website, there's really no room for logic or coherent arguments. Add to that the fact that actors are actively calling for free speech restrictions, and you've got an elliptical mess on your hands -- one that makes the argument the state can be trusted to determine what speech has "value."

SAG's opening salvo names and shames the real parties responsible for ageism…

Plaintiff's website publishes everyone's age regardless of whether it is relevant to any public issue at all, and does so without any comment or context. This is not an invitation to public debate. Rather, it is an open invitation for casting directors to engage in illegally discriminatory conduct…

...before moving on to spend the rest of the brief arguing that its IMDb's fault casting directors engage in illegal discriminatory conduct.

As set forth in the Declaration of Marilyn Szatmary filed concurrently herewith, there is massive age discrimination in the entertainment industry and IMDb.com facilitates that discrimination as the go-to website for casting decisions.

Publishing ages doesn't "facilitate discrimination." Nothing forces studios to participate in discriminatory hiring practices… at least nothing outside the studios themselves. Other sites without paid subscribers are still free to publish actors' ages. At least with IMDb, paid subscribers can ask to have this information removed. Other sites not targeted by this legislation (which, in reality, is every other site but IMDb) have no obligation to remove factual information from their sites.

The brief does nothing to convince anyone the law is Constitutional. All it does is make it clear SAG would rather bite the hand that feeds info to studios than the hand that feeds its members acting jobs. It's bad legislation lawmakers allowed themselves to be talked into and it should be struck down permanently by the time this is all said and done. SAG's support for the blocked bill is intellectually dishonest. The problem lies in the studios, not outside websites, no matter how much studios may rely on IMDb to do its hiring homework for them.

Filed Under: age discrimination, ages, california, facts, first amendment, free speech, hollywood, imdb, junie hoang
Companies: amazon, screen actors guild

Let Them Eat Facts: Why Fact Checking Is Mostly Useless In Convincing Voters

from the feeling-entitled-to-your-own-facts dept

Last week I wrote a bit about the ridiculous and misguided backlash against Facebook over the election results. The basis of the claim was that there were a bunch of fake or extremely misleading stories shared on the site by Trump supporters, and some felt that helped swing the election (and, yes, there were also fake stories shared by Clinton supporters -- but apparently sharing fake news was nearly twice as common among Trump supporters than Clinton supporters). I still think this analysis blaming Facebook is wrong. There was confirmation bias, absolutely, but it's not as if a lack of fake news would have changed people's minds. Many were just passing along the fake news because it fit the worldview they already have.

In response to that last post, someone complained that I was arguing that "facts don't matter" and worried that this would just lead to more and more lies and fake news from all sides. I hope that's not the case, but as I said in my reply, it's somewhat more complicated. Some folks liked that reply a lot so I'm expanding on it a bit in this post. And the key point is to discuss why "fact checking" doesn't really work in convincing people whom to vote for. This doesn't mean I'm against fact checking, or think that facts don't matter. Quite the reverse. I think more facts are really important, and I've spent lots of time over the years calling out bogus news stories based on factual errors.

But here's the problem: the general business of fact checking seems to merely serve to, again, reinforce and retrench opinions, rather than change them. As I said in my comment, there are a large group of people out there that view the whole fact checking business itself as a sort of condescending "let them eat facts" kind of thing, in which they're being scolded for believing the "wrong" kind of thing. And this has lead (not surprisingly) to widespread attacks on fact checkers themselves as being "biased." You don't have to look very hard to find (often conservative-leaning) publications argue that "fact checkers" are biased against their views. The famed debunking site Snopes has come in for particular attack this year as just a liberal front. In the past few months, any time I've mentioned Snopes, or seen someone else link to it in our comments, another comment will mock them from linking to such a "biased" or "Clinton-supporting" site. Snopes itself, for it's part, has put up a somewhat amusing page with all of the contradictory accusations of bias it has received over the years from people who dislike its fact checking on certain politicians.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously stated "You're entitled to your opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts." It's a good quote, but the problem is that plenty of people do feel entitled to their own facts these days. And straight up fact checking seems like the wrong approach. In psychology, there's a concept known as cognitive dissonance, describing how people basically trick themselves into dealing with contradictory beliefs (the term is technically about the uncomfortable position people are in put in because of the contradictory ideas, but it is commonly used to describe how people effectively trick themselves to get out of that state). It seems to describe how many people end up dealing with inconvenient facts. They don't change their mind -- they just come up with an excuse as to why the facts presented are wrong or biased. And when they're presented in the form of "fact checking" from a big site or news publication, it's easier than ever to dismiss them, because we're told over and over again that "you can't trust the media." That gives people an out -- when they come across inconvenient facts, they insist that there's bias or a problem with the source while not dealing with the actual underlying facts. And studies have shown that fact checking can not just fail to convince people in political debates, it can actually make them cling more strongly to their false beliefs.

I'm not quite sure how to deal with this, but I wonder if the overall approach needs to change. It's pretty uncommon to see people change their minds when just handed a big stack of facts. Some have suggested that convincing people they're wrong on something is so complex that it has to involve them literally transforming how they think of themselves, which is not going to happen when you just throw a pile of facts at them. In my experience, the times I've been convinced to change my mind, or seen others change their minds, it tends to come when there are long drawn out conversations, exploring the issues in more depth -- with lots of back and forth. But also it tends to happen in environments where the stakes are lower (e.g., often private, rather than public discussions, where no one "loses face" for realizing they were wrong).

Given that, I still don't know what the solution is, but merely pumping up the fact checking isn't going to do much to change anyone's minds. It just angers some, and reinforces the feelings of superiority of others.

Filed Under: cognitive dissonance, fact checking, facts, journalism, truth

New California Law Attempts To Fight Hollywood Ageism By Censoring Third-Party Websites

from the way-to-solve-the-problem,-jackasses dept

Actress Junie Hoang may have lost her legal battle against IMDb for revealing her age, but the California Assembly is ensuring she'll win the war. Hoang sued IMDb for $1 million, claiming the publication of facts without her permission had resulted in her being a victim of Hollywood ageism. IMDb won the lawsuit, but Governor Jerry Brown has just signed a bill into law that will prevent sites like IMDb from publishing actors' ages.

California Gov. Jerry Brown on Saturday signed legislation that requires certain entertainment sites, such as IMDb, to remove – or not post in the first place – an actor’s age or birthday upon request.

The law, which becomes effective January 1, applies to database sites that allow paid subscribers to post resumes, headshots or other information for prospective employers. Only a paying subscriber can make a removal or non-publication request. Although the legislation may be most critical for actors, it applies to all entertainment job categories.

Quotes from actors' guild representatives and "industry leaders" present this as a positive change. Supposedly the removal of this information will result in fewer actors and actresses from being passed over for roles because they're "too old." Ageism may be an industry-wide problem but the correct solution would be to change Hollywood culture, not tap dance across the First Amendment.

“We are disappointed that AB 1687 was signed into law today,” said Internet Association spokesman Noah Theran. “We remain concerned with the bill and the precedent it will set of suppressing factual information on the internet.”

Michael Beckerman, the association’s president and CEO, also wrote in August for THR, about his opposition to the law.

“Requiring the removal of factually accurate age information across websites suppresses free speech,” Beckerman wrote. “This is not a question of preventing salacious rumors; rather it is about the right to present basic facts that live in the public domain. Displaying such information isn’t a form of discrimination, and internet companies should not be punished for how people use public data.”

That's the problem with this law: it shoots the messenger rather than addresses the underlying problem. The government as a whole has passed many laws aimed at reducing discrimination, but in this case, the California assembly decided the onus should be on data aggregators that have absolutely nothing to do with the process of casting films.

It's unlikely this law will survive a Constitutional challenge, seeing as it prohibits the publication of facts. While any website can voluntarily choose to withhold this information, adding the government into the equation makes it a form of censorship.

The crafters of this law are claiming this speech suppression will benefit the little guy (and girl) the most:

[California Assemblyman Ian] Calderon said the law was more for actors and actresses not as well known as big stars.

“While age information for Hollywood’s biggest stars is readily available from other online sources, this bill is aimed at protecting lesser known actors and actresses competing for smaller roles,” Calderon said in the release. “These actors should not be excluded from auditioning simply based on their age.”

Calderon is correct. Actors should not be excluded simply because of their age. But that's a problem studios need to solve. And if they can't and legislators like himself still feel compelled to step in, the law should target discriminatory hiring practices, not IMDb and other sites like it.

Filed Under: ageism, ages, california, discrimination, facts, first amendment, free speech, hollywood, ian calderon, imdb, internet, junie huang, movies
Companies: amazon, imdb