Have you ever lied about your age? Is diseminating that knowlege online an invasion of privacy? Apparently not, according to the US Court system.
A 41-year-old Texas actress, Junie Hoang (real name: Huong Hoang) sued IMDb (The Internet Movie Database), contending it invaded her privacy and harmed her career when it made her age widely known in 2011.
It has been widely noted that Junie appeared in films like Gingerdead Man 3: Saturday Night Cleaver and Hoodrats 2: Hoodrat Warriors, but to be fair, she has several dozen film appearances since the mid-1990s.
Hoang, who has appeared in several low-budget horror movies and will be in an upcoming TV show, “Exotic Dancers of Houston,” claimed the website breached its customer services agreement when she signed up for a “professional membership, the online newspaper Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported following the Thursday verdict in Seattle.
IMDB’s attorneys argued successfully that Hoang invalidated the membership agreement when she violated its terms by lying on her profile.The jury sided with IMDb and its parent company Amazon, which maintained it had the right to publish true and accurate information, and that Hoang attempted to lie about her age.
“IMDb does not cast actresses,” IMDb attorney Harry Schneider Jr. told the court. “IMDb does not pay actors or actresses in any manner, for any purpose. IMDb hosts a website that seeks to publish accurate information about players in the entertainment industry, and has a First Amendment right to publish such information, a right that IMDb honors by consistently investigating and verifying information when necessary.”
On the plus side, there is too much spin, and not enough real, trustworthy facts online. Overall, while it may hurt Junie, but its a good thing to tell the truth.