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Video Privacy Protection Act: Overview
The Video Privacy Protection Act is a law that protects consumers’ privacy regarding the videos they watch. The act originated under the Reagan administration in 1988. Under the law, no entity may share personally identifiable information regarding video purchases to anyone without the consent of the consumer.
The exceptions to the law permit disclosure of such information:
- To the consumer
- With the written consent of the consumer
- Pursuant to a federal criminal warrant, an equivalent state warrant, a grand jury subpoena or a court order
- To any person, if such disclosure solely the names and addresses of consumers and the consumer has had the opportunity to prohibit such disclosure
- To any person if such disclosure is incident to the ordinary course of business of the video tape service provider, which includes debt collection and transfer of ownership
- Pursuant to a civil court order
History
Congress passed the VPPA after the video rental history of a nominee to the Supreme Court was featured during his nomination process.
During the nomination, Robert Bork’s video rental history was made public after a video store provided a list of his video rental history to a Washington newspaper. The newspaper then wrote a story about the list. While Bork’s rental list did not reveal any scandal (there were no X-rated videos on the list), the incident did spur a conversation about whether or not privacy is a right guaranteed in the constitution.
Bork was not confirmed to the Supreme Court, but the privacy issues that came up during his nomination did invite the passage of the VPPA. The law was passed in 1988, over thirty years ago.
With advancing technology, a video viewer’s right to privacy has become an increasingly important issue. Consumers view videos on streaming services, as well as on a range of other sites. Video advertisements are a major way that retailers reach consumers on the internet, even on sites not primarily used for video.
With the increase in video consumption on the internet, marketers began collecting user data and viewing history and selling or sharing that information with third-party platforms to deliver more targeted ads and to make more money. Over time, online privacy was challenged on many fronts, and VPPA played a role in the evolution of consumers’ privacy expectations.
Blockbuster’s battle
Consumers have filed video privacy lawsuits under the VPPA for years, both before and after the advent of streaming platforms, often taking on large companies in an effort to protect their rights and the rights of others.
In 2008, Dallas County, Texas resident Cathryn Elain Harris filed a class action lawsuit against Blockbuster video, claiming the movie rental company violated VPPA when it shared her records with Facebook without seeking permission.
Facebook’s “Beacon” ad service, released in November 2007 was designed to track user history on participating websites and show those activities to the users’ Facebook friends. Harris won the lawsuit. Facebook eventually made the Beacon technology an opt-in feature.
Permission modification
Despite consumer litigation, some large companies are taking on the VPPA in their own interests.
In 2011, Netflix announced a global integration with Facebook, but noted it was not incorporating the strategy in the United States specifically because of VPPA. Netflix lobbied Congress for an easing of the law, and in 2013, President Obama approved legislation that allowed for companies like Netflix to share information with social media platforms, as long as they had consumer permission to do so.
New scrutiny
Even with VPPA drawing much attention over the years regarding video information sharing, companies are once again facing scrutiny. Now instead of Facebook’s Beacon technology, it’s Meta’s “pixel” data tracking technology that is being challenged. Some question whether companies using data from Facebook pixel technology are also violating VPPA. More than 30 percent of popular websites use Facebook’s pixel.
