IMDb

The title and talent pages of IMDb are accessible to all users, but only registered and logged-in users can submit new material and suggest edits to existing entries. Most of the site's data has been provided by these volunteers. Registered users with a proven track record are able to add and make corrections to cast lists, credits, and some other data points. However, the addition and removal of images, and alterations to titles, cast and crew names, character names, and plot summaries are subject to an approval process; this usually takes between 24 and 72 hours.

On October 2, 2007, character filmographies were added. Character entries are created from character listings in the main filmography database, and as such do not need any additional verification by IMDb staff. They have already been verified when they are added to the main filmography.

Registered users can choose their username, and most are pseudonymous. There is no single index of contributors, no index on each profile page of the items contributed, and—except for plot synopses and biographies—no identification of contributors to each product's or person's data pages. Users are also invited to rate titles on a scale of 1 to 10, and the totals are converted into a weighted mean-rating, with filters in place to mitigate ballot-stuffing.

User profile pages show a user's registration date and, optionally, their personal ratings of titles. Since 2015, "badges" can be added showing a count of contributions. These badges range from total contributions made to independent categories such as photos, trivia, and biographies. If a registered user or visitor is in the entertainment industry and has an IMDb page, they can add photos through IMDbPRO.^[5]

User ratings of films

As one adjunct to data, the IMDb offers a rating scale that allows users to rate films on a scale of one to ten.

IMDb indicates that submitted ratings are filtered and weighted in various ways to produce a weighted mean that is displayed for each film, series, and so on. It states that filters are used to avoid ballot stuffing; the method is not described in detail to avoid attempts to circumvent it. In fact, it sometimes produces an extreme difference between the weighted average and the arithmetic mean.

Rankings

The IMDb Top 250 is a list of the top rated 250 films, based on ratings by the registered users of the website using the methods described. As of 22 February 2022^[update], The Shawshank Redemption, directed by Frank Darabont, is No. 1 on the list, and has been since 2008.^[6][7][8] The "Top 250" rating is based on only the ratings of "regular voters". The number of votes a registered user would have to make to be considered as a user who votes regularly has been kept secret. IMDb has stated that to maintain the effectiveness of the Top 250 list they "deliberately do not disclose the criteria used for a person to be counted as a regular voter".^[9] In addition to other weightings, the Top 250 films are also based on a weighted rating formula referred to in actuarial science as a credibility formula.^[10] This label arises because a statistic is taken to be more credible the greater the number of individual pieces of information; in this case from eligible users who submit ratings. Although the current formula is not disclosed, IMDb originally used the following formula to calculate their weighted rating:^[11]

$${\displaystyle W={\frac {\ R\cdot v+C\cdot m\ }{v+m}}}$$

• W is the weighted rating;
• R is the mean rating for the movie, from 1 to 10;
• v is the number of votes for the movie;
• m is the minimum votes required to be listed in the Top 250 (currently 25,000); and
• C is the mean vote across the whole report (currently 7.0).

The variable W in this formula is equivalent to a Bayesian posterior mean (see Bayesian statistics).

The IMDb also has a Bottom 100 feature which is assembled through a similar process although only 10,000 votes must be received to qualify for the list.^[12]

The Top 250 list comprises a wide range of feature films, including major releases, cult films, independent films, critically acclaimed films, silent films, and non-English-language films. Documentaries, short films and TV episodes are not currently included.

Since 2015, there has been a Top 250 list devoted to ranking television shows.^[13]

Reference view

IMDb originally used a more sidebar/list-based view on title pages. However, in 2010 the site updated pages to more free-flowing layouts, and offered logged-in users an "advanced view" site preference setting called "Combined view", or this could be done on an ad-hoc basis by simply adding /combined to the end of the URL (e.g. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2358891/combined), for users to choose should they prefer the older page view display method or to aid the editing of data.

In 2017, some alterations were made to this advanced view, and the setting was renamed "Reference view", again also able to be accessed ad-hoc by simply adding /reference to the end of the URL (e.g. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2358891/reference), with the former /combined URLs made to link to the newer /reference ones.^[14]

Message boards

Beginning in 2001, the Internet Movie Database also maintained message boards for every title (excepting, as of 2013, TV episodes, which used the same message board for the whole series) and name entry, along with over 140 main boards. To post on the message boards a user needed to "authenticate" their account via cell phone, credit card, or by having been a recent customer of the parent company Amazon.com. Message boards expanded in recent years. The Soapbox started in 1999 as a general message board meant for debates on any subjects. The Politics board started in 2007 was a message board to discuss politics, news events, and current affairs, as well as history and economics.

By February 20, 2017, all the message boards and their content were permanently removed. According to the website, the decision was made because the boards were "no longer providing a positive, useful experience for the vast majority of our more than 250 million monthly users worldwide",^[15] and others have mentioned its susceptibility to trolling and disagreeable behavior.^[16][17][18] Col Needham also mentioned in a post some months earlier that the boards received less income from ads, and that their members only made up a very small part of the website's visitors. The boards were costly to run due to the system's age and dated design, which did not make business sense.^[19] The decision to remove the message boards was met with outspoken backlash from some of its users, and sparked an online petition garnering over 8,000 signatures.^[20] In the days leading up to February 20, 2017, both Archive.org^[21] and MovieChat.org^[22] preserved the entire contents of the IMDb message boards using web scraping. Archive.org and MovieChat.org have published IMDb message board archives, which is legal under the fair use doctrine, because it has no effect on IMDb's potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.^[23][24]

IMDbPro

Actors, crew, and industry executives can post their own resume and upload photos of themselves for a yearly membership fee to IMDbPro. IMDbPro can be accessed by anyone willing to pay the annual fee of US$149.99. Membership enables a user to access the rank order of each industry personality, as well as agent contact information for any actor, producer, director etc. that has an IMDb page. IMDbPro also allows existing actors to claim their name page. Enrolling in IMDbPro enables members who are industry personnel to upload a head shot to open their page, as well as to upload hundreds of photos to accompany their page. Anyone can register as an IMDb user and contribute to the site as well as view its content; however, those users enrolled in IMDbPro have greater access and privileges.^[25]

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Weighted arithmetic mean

Weighted arithmetic mean

The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean, except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The notion of weighted mean plays a role in descriptive statistics and also occurs in a more general form in several other areas of mathematics.

Rating scale

Rating scale

A rating scale is a set of categories designed to elicit information about a quantitative or a qualitative attribute. In the social sciences, particularly psychology, common examples are the Likert response scale and 1-10 rating scales in which a person selects the number which is considered to reflect the perceived quality of a product.

List (information)

List (information)

A list is a set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of the list-maker, but lists are frequently written down on paper, or maintained electronically. Lists are "most frequently a tool" for which "one does not read but only uses a list: one looks up the relevant information in it, but usually does not need to deal with it as a whole".

The Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption is a 1994 American drama film written and directed by Frank Darabont, based on the 1982 Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. The film tells the story of banker Andy Dufresne, who is sentenced to life in Shawshank State Penitentiary for the murders of his wife and her lover, despite his claims of innocence. Over the following two decades, he befriends a fellow prisoner, contraband smuggler Ellis "Red" Redding, and becomes instrumental in a money laundering operation led by the prison warden Samuel Norton. William Sadler, Clancy Brown, Gil Bellows, and James Whitmore appear in supporting roles.

Frank Darabont

Frank Darabont

Frank Árpád Darabont is an American film director, screenwriter and producer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and a Golden Globe Award. In his early career, he was primarily a screenwriter for such horror films as A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), The Blob (1988) and The Fly II (1989). As a director, he is known for his film adaptations of Stephen King novellas and novels, such as The Shawshank Redemption (1994), The Green Mile (1999), and The Mist (2007).

Actuarial science

Actuarial science

Actuarial science is the discipline that applies mathematical and statistical methods to assess risk in insurance, pension, finance, investment and other industries and professions. More generally, actuaries apply rigorous mathematics to model matters of uncertainty.

Bayesian statistics

Bayesian statistics

Bayesian statistics is a theory in the field of statistics based on the Bayesian interpretation of probability where probability expresses a degree of belief in an event. The degree of belief may be based on prior knowledge about the event, such as the results of previous experiments, or on personal beliefs about the event. This differs from a number of other interpretations of probability, such as the frequentist interpretation that views probability as the limit of the relative frequency of an event after many trials.

URL

URL

A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), although many people use the two terms interchangeably. URLs occur most commonly to reference web pages (HTTP) but are also used for file transfer (FTP), email (mailto), database access (JDBC), and many other applications.

Web scraping

Web scraping

Web scraping, web harvesting, or web data extraction is data scraping used for extracting data from websites. Web scraping software may directly access the World Wide Web using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol or a web browser. While web scraping can be done manually by a software user, the term typically refers to automated processes implemented using a bot or web crawler. It is a form of copying in which specific data is gathered and copied from the web, typically into a central local database or spreadsheet, for later retrieval or analysis.

Pre-website

IMDb originated in 1990 with a Usenet posting entitled "Those Eyes", by the English film fan and computer programmer Col Needham,^[26] about actresses with beautiful eyes. Others with similar interests soon responded with additions or different lists of their own. Needham subsequently started an "Actors List", while Dave Knight began a "Directors List", and Andy Krieg took over "THE LIST" from Hank Driskill, which would later be renamed the "Actress List". Both lists had been restricted to people who were alive and working, but soon retired people were added, so Needham started what was then (but did not remain) a separate "Dead Actors/Actresses List". Steve Hammond started collecting and merging character names for both the actors and actresses lists. When these achieved popularity, they were merged back into the lists themselves. The goal of the participants now was to make the lists as inclusive as possible.

By late 1990, the lists included almost 10,000 films and television series, correlated with actors and actresses appearing therein. On October 17, 1990, Needham developed and posted a collection of Unix shell scripts that could be used to search the four lists, and thus the database that would become the IMDb was born.^[27] At the time, it was known as the "rec.arts.movies movie database".

On the web

The database had been expanded to include additional categories of filmmakers and other demographic material as well as trivia, biographies, and plot summaries. The movie ratings had been properly integrated with the list data, and a centralized email interface for querying the database had been created by Alan Jay. Later, in 1993, it moved onto the fledgling World Wide Web under the name of Cardiff Internet Movie Database.^[28] The database resided on the servers of the computer science department of Cardiff University in Wales. Rob Hartill was the original web interface author. In 1994, the email interface was revised to accept the submission of all information, which enabled people to email the specific list maintainer with their updates. However, the structure remained so that information received on a single film was divided among multiple section managers, the sections being defined and determined by categories of film personnel and the individual filmographies contained therein. Over the next few years, the database was run on a network of mirrors across the world with donated bandwidth.^[29]

As an independent company

In 1996 IMDb was incorporated in the United Kingdom, becoming the Internet Movie Database Ltd. Founder Col Needham became the primary owner. General revenue for site operations was generated through advertising, licensing and partnerships.^[30]

As Amazon.com subsidiary (1998–present)

In 1998, Jeff Bezos, founder, owner, and CEO of Amazon.com, struck a deal with Needham and other principal shareholders to buy IMDb outright; Amazon paid $55 million for IMDb and two other companies.^[31] Bezos attached it to Amazon as a subsidiary, private company.^[32] This gave IMDb the ability to pay the shareholders salaries for their work. In the process of expanding its product line, Amazon.com intended to use IMDb as an advertising resource for selling DVDs and videotapes.

IMDb continued to expand its functionality. On January 15, 2002, it added a subscription service known as IMDbPro, aimed at entertainment professionals. IMDbPro was announced and launched at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. It provides a variety of services including film production and box office details, a company directory, and the ability of subscribers to add personal information pages.

From 1996 onwards, an annual newsletter email (archived on the website) has been sent from Col Needham to contributors on the first day of each calendar year. The annual newsletter lists various information about the past year on the site, including stats, top contributors tally for the year (the top 300 users, currently; fewer in previous years), and a perspective on the site's progress and future.^[33][34][35]

As an additional incentive for users, as of 2003^[update], users identified as one of the "top 100 contributors" of hard data received complimentary free access to IMDbPro for the following calendar year; for 2006 this was increased to the top 150 contributors, and for 2010 to the top 250.^[36]

In 2008, IMDb launched their first official foreign-language version with IMDb.de, in German. Also in 2008, IMDb acquired two other companies: Withoutabox^[37] and Box Office Mojo.^[38]

The website was originally Perl-based, but IMDb no longer discloses what software it uses for reasons of security.^[39] In 2010, the site was filtered in China.^[40]

In 2016, The IMDb Studio at Sundance was launched, a talk show that is presented on IMDb and YouTube.^[41][42]

In April 2017, IMDb celebrated its 25th anniversary. As of that year, Needham was still managing IMDb from its main office in Bristol in the Castlemead office tower.^[43]

In January 2019, IMDb launched an ad-supported streaming service called Freedive.^[44] This was the company's second attempt at a streaming service; it launched a similar service in 2008.^[45][46] In June 2019, Freedive was rebranded as IMDb TV.^[47] In April 2022, the service was rebranded again as Amazon Freevee.^[48]

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Col Needham

Col Needham

Colin Needham is a British computer engineer who is known as the founder and CEO of IMDb. He has been general manager of IMDb since its acquisition by Amazon in 1998.

Unix

Unix

Unix is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others.

Shell script

Shell script

A shell script is a computer program designed to be run by a Unix shell, a command-line interpreter. The various dialects of shell scripts are considered to be scripting languages. Typical operations performed by shell scripts include file manipulation, program execution, and printing text. A script which sets up the environment, runs the program, and does any necessary cleanup or logging, is called a wrapper.

Cardiff University

Cardiff University

Cardiff University is a public research university in Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom. It was established in 1883 as the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire and became a founding college of the University of Wales in 1893. It merged with the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology (UWIST) in 1988 as the University of Wales College, Cardiff. In 1997 it received degree-awarding powers, but held them in abeyance. It adopted the operating name of Cardiff University in 1999; this became its legal name in 2005, when it became an independent university awarding its own degrees.

Rob Hartill

Rob Hartill

Robert Hartill is a computer programmer and web designer best known for his work on the Internet Movie Database website and the Apache web server and is notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web.

Jeff Bezos

Jeff Bezos

Jeffrey Preston Bezos is an American entrepreneur, media proprietor, investor, and commercial astronaut. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon. With a net worth of US$128 billion as of February 2023, Bezos is the third-wealthiest person in the world and was the wealthiest from 2017 to 2021 according to both Bloomberg's Billionaires Index and Forbes.

Sundance Film Festival

Sundance Film Festival

The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,660 attending in 2016. It takes place each January in Park City, Utah; Salt Lake City, Utah; and at the Sundance Resort, and acts as a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival consists of competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature films and short films, and a group of out-of-competition sections, including NEXT, New Frontier, Spotlight, Midnight, Sundance Kids, From the Collection, Premieres, and Documentary Premieres.

Box Office Mojo

Box Office Mojo

Box Office Mojo is an American website that tracks box-office revenue in a systematic, algorithmic way. The site was founded in 1998 by Brandon Gray, and was bought in 2008 by IMDb, which itself is owned by Amazon.

Perl

Perl

Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was officially changed to Raku in October 2019.

Internet censorship in China

Internet censorship in China

Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China (PRC) affects both publishing and viewing online material. Many controversial events are censored from news coverage, preventing many Chinese citizens from knowing about the actions of their government, and severely restricting freedom of the press. Such measures, including the complete blockage of various websites, inspired the policy's nickname, the "Great Firewall of China", which blocks websites. Methods used to block websites and pages include DNS spoofing, blocking access to IP addresses, analyzing and filtering URLs, packet inspection, and resetting connections.

Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in South West England. The wider Bristol Built-up Area is the eleventh most populous urban area in the United Kingdom.

Castlemead

Castlemead

Castlemead is the second tallest high-rise building in Bristol, England, after Castle Park View topped out in 2020. Designed by A.J. Hines and started in 1973, work was halted by a recession in the property market and it was completed in 1981. The building has a roof height of 80 metres or 262 feet and consists of 18 floors, 17 of which are offices. Castlemead is owned by Regional Properties Ltd and managed by Knight Frank LLP.

Data provided by subjects

In 2006, IMDb introduced its "Résumé Subscription Service", where an actor or crew member can post their résumé and upload photos^[49] for a yearly fee.^[50] IMDb résumé pages are kept on a sub-page of the regular entry about that person, with a regular entry automatically created for each résumé subscriber who does not already have one.^[51]

As of 2012, Resume Services was included as part of an IMDbPro subscription and is no longer offered as a separate subscription service.

Copyright, vandalism and error issues

Volunteers who contribute content to the database technically retain copyright on their contributions, but the compilation of the content becomes the exclusive property of IMDb with the full right to copy, modify, and sublicense it, and they are verified before posting.^[52] However, credit is not given on specific title or filmography pages to the contributor(s) who have provided information. Conversely, a credited text entry, such as a plot summary, may be corrected for content, grammar, sentence structure, perceived omission or error, by other contributors without having to add their names as co-authors. Due to the time required for processing submitted data or text before it is displayed, IMDb is different from user-contributed projects like Discogs, or OpenStreetMap, or Wikipedia, in that contributors can't add, delete, or modify the data or text on impulse, and the manipulation of data is controlled by IMDb technology and salaried staff.^[53]

IMDb has been subject to deliberate additions of false information; in 2012 a spokesperson said: "We make it easy for users and professionals to update much of our content, which is why we have an 'edit page.' The data that is submitted goes through a series of consistency checks before it goes live. Given the sheer volume of the information, occasional mistakes are inevitable, and, when reported, they are promptly fixed. We always welcome corrections."^[54]

The Java Movie Database (JMDB)^[55] is reportedly creating an IMDb_Error.log file that lists all the errors found while processing the IMDb plain text files. A Wiki alternative to IMDb is Open Media Database^[56] whose content is also contributed by users but licensed under a Creative Commons license (CC BY) and the GFDL. Since 2007, IMDb has been experimenting with wiki-programmed sections for complete film synopses, parental guides, and FAQs about titles as determined by (and answered by) individual contributors.

Data format and access

IMDb, unlike other AI-automated queries, does not provide an API for automated queries. However, most of the data can be downloaded as compressed plain text files and the information can be extracted using the command-line interface tools provided.^[57] There is also a Java-based graphical user interface (GUI) application available that is able to process the compressed plain text files, which allows a search and a display of the information.^[55] This GUI application supports different languages, but the movie related data are in English, as made available by IMDb. A Python package called IMDbPY can also be used to process the compressed plain text files into a number of different SQL databases, enabling easier access to the entire dataset for searching or data mining.^[58]

Film titles

The IMDb has sites in English as well as versions translated completely or in part into other languages (Danish, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Romanian). The non-English language sites display film titles in the specified language. Originally, IMDb's English language sites displayed titles according to their original country-of-origin language, however, in 2010 IMDb began allowing individual users in the UK and USA to choose primary title display by either the original-language titles, or the US or UK release title (normally, in English).

Podcasts

On October 21, 2021, the site added the ability to add podcasts (both as series and episodes) as titles to the site, via an IMDb employee announcement on their Sprinklr forums.^[59] As of December 2022^[update], the numbers of podcast series stood at 24,778, with podcast episodes at 3,076,386.^[3]

Discover more about Content and format related topics

Discogs

Discogs

Discogs is a database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. While the site was originally created with a goal of becoming the largest online database of electronic music, the site now includes releases in all genres on all formats. After the database was opened to contributions from the public, rock music began to become the most prevalent genre listed.

OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, open geographic database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveys, trace from aerial imagery and also import from other freely licensed geodata sources. OpenStreetMap is freely licensed under the Open Database License and as a result commonly used to make electronic maps, inform turn-by-turn navigation, assist in humanitarian aid and data visualisation. OpenStreetMap uses its own topology to store geographical features which can then be exported into other GIS file formats. The OpenStreetMap website itself is an online map, geodata search engine and editor.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons

Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright licenses, known as Creative Commons licenses, free of charge to the public. These licenses allow authors of creative works to communicate which rights they reserve and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators. An easy-to-understand one-page explanation of rights, with associated visual symbols, explains the specifics of each Creative Commons license. Content owners still maintain their copyright, but Creative Commons licenses give standard releases that replace the individual negotiations for specific rights between copyright owner (licensor) and licensee, that are necessary under an "all rights reserved" copyright management.

GNU Free Documentation License

GNU Free Documentation License

The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and derivatives to be available under the same license. Copies may also be sold commercially, but, if produced in larger quantities, the original document or source code must be made available to the work's recipient.

Data compression

Data compression

In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compression reduces bits by identifying and eliminating statistical redundancy. No information is lost in lossless compression. Lossy compression reduces bits by removing unnecessary or less important information. Typically, a device that performs data compression is referred to as an encoder, and one that performs the reversal of the process (decompression) as a decoder.

Command-line interface

Command-line interface

A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and providing information to them as to what actions they are to perform. In some cases the invocation is conditional based on conditions established by the user or previous executables. Such access was first provided by computer terminals starting in the mid-1960s. This provided an interactive environment not available with punched cards or other input methods.

Graphical user interface

Graphical user interface

The GUI, graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, instead of text-based UIs, typed command labels or text navigation. GUIs were introduced in reaction to the perceived steep learning curve of CLIs, which require commands to be typed on a computer keyboard.

Danish language

Danish language

Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by about six million people, principally in and around Denmark. Communities of Danish speakers are also found in Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and the northern German region of Southern Schleswig, where it has minority language status. Minor Danish-speaking communities are also found in Norway, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina.

Finnish language

Finnish language

Finnish is a Uralic language of the Finnic branch, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland. In Sweden, both Finnish and Meänkieli are official minority languages. The Kven language, which like Meänkieli is mutually intelligible with Finnish, is spoken in the Norwegian county Troms og Finnmark by a minority group of Finnish descent.

Hungarian language

Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic language spoken in Hungary and parts of several neighbouring countries that used to belong to it. It is the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Outside Hungary, it is also spoken by Hungarian communities in southern Slovakia, western Ukraine (Subcarpathia), central and western Romania (Transylvania), northern Serbia (Vojvodina), northern Croatia, northeastern Slovenia (Prekmurje), and eastern Austria.

Polish language

Polish language

Polish is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group written in the Latin script. It is spoken primarily in Poland and serves as the native language of the Poles. In addition to being the official language of Poland, it is also used by the Polish diaspora. There are over 50 million Polish speakers around the world. It ranks as the sixth most-spoken among languages of the European Union. Polish is subdivided into regional dialects and maintains strict T–V distinction pronouns, honorifics, and various forms of formalities when addressing individuals.

Portuguese language

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a western Romance language of the Indo-European language family, originating in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is an official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe, while having co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, and Macau. A Portuguese-speaking person or nation is referred to as "Lusophone". As the result of expansion during colonial times, a cultural presence of Portuguese speakers is also found around the world. Portuguese is part of the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia and the County of Portugal, and has kept some Celtic phonology in its lexicon.

In 2011, in the case of Hoang v. Amazon.com, Inc., IMDb was sued by an anonymous actress for at least US$1,075,000 because the movie website publicly disclosed her age (40, at the time) without her consent.^[60] The actress claimed that revealing her age could cause her to lose acting opportunities.^[61] Judge Marsha J. Pechman, a US district judge in Seattle, dismissed the lawsuit, saying the actress had no grounds to proceed with an anonymous complaint. The actress re-filed and so revealed that she was Huong Hoang of Texas, who uses the stage name Junie Hoang.^[62] In 2013, Pechman dismissed all causes of action except for a breach of contract claim against IMDb; a jury then sided with IMDb on that claim.^[63] The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court judgment in March 2015.^[64]

Also in 2011, in the case of United Video Properties Inc., et al. v. Amazon.Com Inc. et al.,^[65] IMDb and Amazon were sued by Rovi Corporation and others for patent infringement over their various program listing offerings.^[66] The patent claims were ultimately construed in a way favorable to IMDb, and Rovi / United Video Properties lost the case.^[67] In April 2014, the decision was affirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals.^[68]

On January 1, 2017, the State of California implemented state bill AB-1687, a SAG-AFTRA-backed anti-ageism statute which requires "commercial online entertainment employment services" to honor requests by their subscribers for their ages and birthdays to be hidden.^[69] By the beginning of 2017, IMDb had received more than 2,300 requests from individuals to remove their date of birth from the site. Included in this group were 10 Academy Award winners and another 71 nominated for Oscars, Emmys, or Golden Globes.^[70] On February 23, 2017, Judge Vince Girdhari Chhabria issued a stay on the bill pending a further trial, claiming that it possibly violated the First Amendment because it inhibited the public consumption of information. He also questioned the intent of the bill, as it was ostensibly meant to target IMDb.^[71]

IMDb had long maintained that it would keep all valid information, but changed that policy related to birth names in 2019, instead removing birth names that are not widely and publicly known, of persons who no longer use their birth names.^[72] This was done in response to pressure from LGBTQ groups against the publication of the birth names of transgender people without their consent (deadnaming). Any name a person had previously been credited under, however, continues to be maintained in the credits section.^[72]

Discover more about Legal and policy issues related topics

Hoang v. Amazon.com, Inc.

Hoang v. Amazon.com, Inc.

Hoang v. Amazon.com, Inc. et al. is a lawsuit brought by actress Junie Hoang in October 2011 against IMDb.com and its parent company Amazon.com for revealing her true date of birth, which she said opened her up to age discrimination. In March 2013, all of her claims against Amazon and all but one of her claims against IMDb were dismissed, and in April 2013, a jury found that IMDb was not liable for the remaining claim for breach of contract; the verdict was upheld on appeal.

United States dollar

United States dollar

The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States and several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introduced the U.S. dollar at par with the Spanish silver dollar, divided it into 100 cents, and authorized the minting of coins denominated in dollars and cents. U.S. banknotes are issued in the form of Federal Reserve Notes, popularly called greenbacks due to their predominantly green color.

Marsha J. Pechman

Marsha J. Pechman

Marsha J. Pechman is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington.

Breach of contract

Breach of contract

Breach of contract is a legal cause of action and a type of civil wrong, in which a binding agreement or bargained-for exchange is not honored by one or more of the parties to the contract by non-performance or interference with the other party's performance. Breach occurs when a party to a contract fails to fulfill its obligation(s), whether partially or wholly, as described in the contract, or communicates an intent to fail the obligation or otherwise appears not to be able to perform its obligation under the contract. Where there is breach of contract, the resulting damages have to be paid to the aggrieved party by the party breaching the contract.

SAG-AFTRA

SAG-AFTRA

The Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists is an American labor union representing approximately 160,000 film and television actors, journalists, radio personalities, recording artists, singers, voice actors, internet influencers, fashion models, and other media professionals worldwide. The organization was formed on March 30, 2012, following the merger of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. SAG-AFTRA is a member of the AFL–CIO, the largest federation of unions in the United States.

Vince Chhabria

Vince Chhabria

Vince Girdhari Chhabria is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California and formerly a Deputy City Attorney at the San Francisco City Attorney's Office.

First Amendment to the United States Constitution

First Amendment to the United States Constitution

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws that regulate an establishment of religion, or that prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the freedom of assembly, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.

Deadnaming

Deadnaming

Deadnaming is the act of referring to a transgender or non-binary person by a name they used prior to transitioning, such as their birth name. Deadnaming may be unintentional, or a deliberate attempt to deny, mock or invalidate a person's gender identity.

As of December 2022^[update], IMDb has the following statistics:^[3]