Partner Josh Hammack Quoted by Reuters in Supreme Court VPPA Article
Bailey Glasser partner Joshua I. Hammack was quoted by Reuters in a commentary piece by journalist Jenna Greene about the Supreme Court’s granting certiorari in Salazar v. Paramount Global, our hotly litigated case about the meaning of “consumer” under the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA).
As described in the article, the VPPA is “a throwback to an era when a trip to Blockbuster to rent ‘Dirty Dancing’ or ‘Die Hard’ was (in the vernacular of the day) totally rad. But the implications of the dispute are anything but retro.”
The VPPA was enacted in 1988 after a local D.C. video store disclosed the rental records of Judge Robert Bork—then under consideration for a seat on the Supreme Court—to a journalist. The law broadly prohibits a video tape service provider from knowingly disclosing a consumer’s personally identifiable information without first obtaining that consumer’s consent. As most relevant here, the VPPA defines “consumer” to include a “subscriber of goods or services from a video tape service provider.”
In this case, Paramount disclosed Mr. Salazar’s Facebook ID (a unique numerical identifier Facebook assigns to each user) and video-watching history to Facebook without his consent. Mr. Salazar sued, alleging Paramount’s conduct violated the VPPA. But both lower courts held Mr. Salazar was not a statutory “consumer” because he subscribed only to Paramount’s online newsletter, and not to its audiovisual goods or services. As a result, both lower courts dismissed his VPPA claim. Now, the Supreme Court will decide whether Mr. Salazar’s case can move forward.
Bailey Glasser’s appellate team has been litigating this question across the country for years, including Hammack arguing the issue to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second, Sixth, and D.C. Circuits. The case now before the Supreme Court will have significant implications for how streaming services and other platforms handle user data, and it will almost certainly affect the privacy rights of millions of Americans consumers.
For more details and to read the full Reuters article, visit this link.