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Blockbuster Agrees to Settlement in Privacy Class Action Lawsuit
By Mike Holter
Blockbuster has quietly reached a class action lawsuit settlement over allegations it violated federal video privacy laws by retaining information about customers’ movie rental history. The settlement will resolve a September 2011 class action lawsuit filed by Minnesota resident Baseem Missaghi, who alleged that Blockbuster unlawfully kept “a virtual digital dossier on millions of consumers nationwide.”
According to the VPPA class action lawsuit, Blockbuster’s records “contain not only its customers’ credit card numbers and billing/contact information, but also a highly detailed account of their video viewing histories and preferences.”
This violates the Video Privacy Protection Act, the class action lawsuit argues, which prohibits movie rental services from disclosing information about the movies people watch without their consent. The Act also requires movie rental companies to destroy “personally identifiable information” as soon as it is no longer needed.
Several movie rental companies have come under fire recently for allegedly violating the VPPA, including Netflix, Hulu and Redbox.
Netflix agreed to a $9 million class action lawsuit settlement in February (the details of which still haven’t been made public), while Redbox won a dismissal of a critical portion of the complaint. In that case, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Redbox, ruling that consumers cannot use a VPPA lawsuit to seek damages for record destruction violations; they can only seek damages if a company discloses those records.
Hulu is still fighting its case, which accuses Hulu of working with an analytics company to use “supercookies” to track people. Hulu is arguing that the VPPA only applies to brick-and-mortar rental stores.
Blockbuster is still finalizing the class action settlement deal and is expected to file the agreement with the U.S. District of Minnesota by early June.
Keep checking Top Class Actions for details on how to file a claim for the Blockbuster VPPA Class Action Lawsuit Settlement when the details are made public.
Updated May 9th, 2012
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One thought on Blockbuster Agrees to Settlement in Privacy Class Action Lawsuit
Is there any legal action against Blockbuster regarding their non acceptance of their gift cards? I have a $100 card which we bought and they say they won’t accept it. We never received any information or heard of any financial problems with them.