Supreme Court to Hear Case Involving Video Privacy Protection Act

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear Salazar v. Paramount Global, a case that could dramatically expand corporate liability under the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), a decades-old statute carrying statutory damages of $2,500 per violation.

A McCarter & English alert notes that $2,500 per violation is an alarming figure at class-action scale, and any company whose website hosts video content and uses standard tracking tools could face significant exposure.

The VPPA was enacted after a newspaper published an article based off a Supreme Court nominee’s video-rental history. The statute prohibits a “video tape service provider” from knowingly disclosing consumers’ personally identifiable information.

With the rise of the internet, courts have split on who qualifies as a “consumer.” Some apply the term broadly to anyone who signs up for any service on a video-hosting site. Others limit it to subscribers of video-specific services.

The Supreme Court will resolve this split. A broad ruling would expose companies that use pixels or cookies to share viewing data with third-party advertising and analytics vendors, a standard digital marketing practice, to VPPA liability. Even free newsletter signups or non-video purchases on a video-hosting site could trigger coverage.

Legal teams for companies that offer streaming or video services, and companies with websites that contain videos, should review how they share viewing data with third-party advertising and analytics vendors. They should also investigate how they use tracking technologies such as pixels, cookies, server-to-server tracking, device fingerprinting, web beacons, and tracking tags (UTM codes). It is also important to review third-party data-sharing arrangements with ad and analytics vendors, and current consent mechanisms.