Plaintiffs let go of a class-action lawsuit accusing Michigan’s Hillsdale College of violating the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) through its use of a tracking pixel to collect website users' information and disclose it to a social media company. The plaintiffs gave no reasoning for Tuesday's voluntary dismissal.
VPPA Lawsuits
The Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), originally passed in the VHS era, is being used to sue websites and applications such as Meta and TikTok that track and share viewing data. Plaintiffs claim these tools transmit personally identifiable information without proper consent. Courts are divided on how the VPPA applies to modern web behavior, creating uncertainty for publishers and adtech providers. This page follows key lawsuits, legal interpretations, and compliance risks tied to VPPA claims.
Privacy Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week, in case you missed them. All articles can be found by searching the title or clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
Though technology is involved in most privacy and data-breach litigation, the real common thread between the cases is human involvement, said privacy lawyers during a webinar hosted by the Clark Hill law firm Tuesday. Therefore, the lawyers said staff training should be made a priority, instead of throwing technology at privacy issues.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday granted a writ of certiorari in a Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) case from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, moving litigation in the area one step closer to receiving clarity on what it means to be a “consumer” under the 1988 federal statute. One privacy lawyer celebrated the high court’s decision, while another compared the proceedings with another VPPA case the high court declined to review in December (see 2512080052).
Plaintiffs voluntarily dropped a class-action suit alleging CuriousityStream violated the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) by sharing personally identifiable information (PII) with third parties via a tracking pixel. No reason was given for Monday's dismissal.
Paramount Skydance and Pluto asked a federal court Thursday to drop a privacy class action alleging they collected personally identifiable information (PII) from their child-directed video platform and sold it to advertisers. Skydance and Pluto argue the plaintiffs don't claim injuries under any privacy-related torts.
CuriousityStream asked a federal court Monday to drop a Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) suit from 2024 against it, arguing that no ordinary person could decipher the shared metadata at the center of the case.
As the privacy landscape continues to evolve, companies may find it difficult to manage regulator expectations of compliance and consumer demands as outlined in lawsuits, said Julie Rubash, chief privacy officer for Sourcepoint, a vendor.
Though many courts have adopted the ordinary-person standard when interpreting Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) cases, differences remain in how judges apply it, even in cases with “nearly identical allegations,” Troutman privacy lawyer Dustin Taylor said in a post.
As lawsuits over tracking technologies increase rapidly, some courts have managed to narrow the scope of older statutes, countering the litigation wave, said panelists during an Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) webinar Wednesday. But other courts remain split on the reach of these laws, they added.