Video Rental Privacy Laws May Soon Apply to Streaming

The US Supreme Court will soon hear a case alleging that Paramount violated the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA).

The class action was filed in 2022 and alleges that Paramount violated the VPPA by sharing Michael Salazar's data with Facebook.

Salazar says he subscribed to a newsletter at 247sports.com, which is owned by Paramount, and then proceeded to watch some videos on the website. Because Paramount had installed the Meta Tracking Pixel on the website - and because Salazar was signed into Facebook while watching the videos - Facebook was able to get detailed information about which videos he watched, including his email address from the newsletter, which then resulted in better-targeted ads on both sites.

The Meta Pixel is an analytics tool - similar to Google Analytics - that has resulted in Facebook collecting obscene amounts of data from visitors to other websites, including sensitive medical data that's usually hidden behind a login portal. The Markup documented this extensively in 2022, and many organizations stopped using it (if only temporarily) as a result of the scandal.

The VPPA defines privacy rights for "consumers" of audio video content, and this is what the case will hinge on. Salazar argues that because he subscribed to the newsletter, that made him a "consumer," which the VPPA defines as “any renter, purchaser, or subscriber of goods or services from a video tape service provider.” (The act further defines "video tape service provider" to include "similar audio visual materials," so 247sports' role as a provider seems to be agreed upon already.) Courts so far have been split on the issue.

The case is set to go before the Supreme Court in the 2026-2027 term, which begins in October. If the courts rule in favor of Salazar, this would be a huge privacy win.