Apparently, some actress thinks it is.
An actress, aged 40, going only by the name "Jane Doe," attempted unsuccessfully to sue Amazon.com (the owners of IMBD. Small, scary world, eh?) because they portrayed her real age to the world on her IMDB page. Oh, yeah - they got her real age from her IMDbPro account and the credit card she used to pay for it.
Is this fair? I mean, 1) is it fair for them to display her real age even if she didn't ever input it onto her own page, and 2) Does she have a right to complain? Who does IMDB serve: the people who look up the listings for their own knowledge or for casting purposes, or is it merely a way for actors to display their resumes?
Amazon asked that the courts throw out her $1 million lawsuit , claiming that the lawsuit was frivolous. It was thrown out. She won't get her money.
“Plaintiff’s attempt to manipulate the federal court system so she can censor IMDb.com’s display of her birth date and pretend to the world that she is not 40 years old is selfish, contrary to the public interest and a frivolous abuse of this court’s resources,” says Amazon's lawyers. Amazon also claims that they can use credit card info like birth dates and display them publicly because that's what it says in their subscriber agreement and privacy policy, which she signed when she joined up with an account on IMDBpro. AND that she asked them to post a fake age and FUCK THAT.
If the common person with a real job has trouble understanding why being listed as 40 years old on IMDB warrants a 1 Million Dollar lawsuit, actors' unions AFTRA and SAG (both short for the Latin for "we control who works") released a statement explaining how age discrimination and sexism work in Hollywood and why IMBD should pay lots of money to this woman because they subjected her to said sexism and ageism:
Quote:
An actor’s actual age is irrelevant to casting. What matters is the age range that an actor can portray. For the entire history of professional acting, this has been true but that reality has been upended by the development of IMDb as an industry standard used in casting offices across America. IMDb publishes the actual dates of birth of thousands of actors without their consent, most of them not celebrities but rank-and-file actors whose names are unknown to the general public. When their actual ages then become known to casting personnel, the 10+ year age range that many of them can portray suddenly shrinks and so do their opportunities to work. The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and Screen Actors Guild strongly believe that businesses like IMDb have a moral and legal obligation not to facilitate age discrimination in employment. Entertainment industry employers who would never directly ask a potential employee’s age routinely access that information through IMDb and its professional subscription site IMDbPro. IMDb has the power to remove the temptation for employers to engage in age discrimination by accessing this information.
We are disappointed that IMDb has rejected the efforts of AFTRA, Screen Actors Guild and other entertainment industry unions and workers to work together to reach a solution to this problem. It is time for IMDb to step up and take responsibility for the harm it has caused, and to take appropriate measures to protect entertainment industry workers, including actors, from losing jobs for the enhancement of IMDb’s financial statements.
For a long time, IMDb had my age listed as 7 years older than I really am (forever 21). No amount of emails with scans of my driver's license made any difference. My pleas of "I'm not 37" fell on deaf ears. It took some random person, other than myself, two seconds to email them my real age and they changed the info to my correct age. In short: IMDB is run by a bunch of assholes. And you can easily post shit that's clearly fake and they don't even bother fact checking. But they don't necessarily have an obligation to keep your acting career going, and if you're not getting jobs because you're female and 40, then maybe the problem is not IMDB or that you're 40 but instead a blatantly sexist and ridiculous industry that punishes women for being real and awards idealized youth through a series of revolving-door actresses who play the mothers of teenagers when they're 28 (see: "Terra Nova").
The worst thing this woman could have done was to remain anonymous. Just think of all the free publicity on which she's missing out and all the jobs she would have been offered by companies desperate to prove they aren't sexist even though they are. What a maroon.
) 
I heard that the actress in question is Asian. That's all anyone knows.
And since a lot of Asian women look pretty much the same until they hit menopause (not racist!) I can see how she would be bothered by her actual age being revealed.