Actress Suing IMDB Gets Court Date

Now that it’s been leaked that actress Huang Hoang is the woman suing IMDb (international movie database) for revealing her age without her permission, it is now said that the actress has just received a court date for January 7, 2013.

The actress is suing IMDb, the popular movie and professional database for breach of contract, fraud and violation of Washington’s Privacy and Consumer Protection Act. Since the news hit that an actress was suing the site in October, talk of the validity of the nature of the case has been widely discussed on Internet forums.

What’s in question is if the IMDb owner Amazon had the right to publish the actresses age. The most important part of the lawsuit is how the site obtained her age, since Hoang didn’t list it in her information. The actress claims that the site grabbed her information from the credit card she used to sign up with the service. In order to receive all benefits from the site a client needs to purchase an IMDBpro account. Amazon is saying that this speculation is just that, a speculation and has dismissed the claim.

Both sides are going to be participating in a discovery process, which entails collecting all information. This period will last until August, both sides will have to follow up with motions and that will decide if the case goes to trial in the end or if it gets wrapped up in preliminary hearings.

Amazon is claiming that they didn’t use Huang Hoangs information incorrectly, and if they in fact did pull the information from her credit card, they’re saying that it doesn’t go against their privacy act. The terms of their policy state that it uses the information given to the website for, among other things, “improving our site.” The policy terms also links to examples of collected data, including “your name, e-mail address, physical address, zip code, and phone number; your age and gender; the movies and actors you like or dislike; and your general movie preferences.”

Hoang is being represented by John Dozier at Dozier Internet Law while Amazon is with Perkins Coie. The jusge on this case is Marsha Pechman.

What do you think? Is Hoang right for filling the suit? Was Amazon insensitive by releasing the information? Do you think releasing the age of the actress was damaging to her career? Weigh in!