'The Onion' Asks a Federal Court to Drop Video Privacy Protection Act Suit
Satirical news site The Onion asked a federal court Friday to drop a case against it alleging violations of the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), on the grounds that the plaintiff lacks standing and because "courts are beginning to 'shut the door for Pixel-based VPPA claims.'” Case 25-05471 alleges the news site deployed a tracking pixel on its site that transmitted a subscriber's personally identifiable information (PII) to third parties without his prior knowledge or consent (see 2505200012).
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Plaintiff Daniel McRitchie "lacks standing under Article III because he cannot allege any concrete injury," the media outlet said in a court document. A plaintiff can't "state a statutory claim based on a business-to-business transfer of information, as alleged here," it added.
Additionally, "under the prevailing 'ordinary person' standard for assessing the VPPA’s prohibition on sharing [PII], sharing information via the Meta Pixel neither identifies video information nor a particular individual in violation of the VPPA."
The Onion cited Solomon v. Flipps Media (see 2505010046) and Hughes v. Nat’l Football League (see 2506230054), which said the VPPA only applied to the disclosure of information that would allow an ordinary person to learn a specific individual's video-watching history as grounds for the case against The Onion to be dropped. The 'ordinary person' standard is also being cited in Golden v. NBCUniversal Media (see 2506060030).
McRitchie's class-action complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois in May. Global Tetrahedron, a Chicago-based firm, owns The Onion and is a defendant in the suit.