Judge Tosses Cartoon Network Privacy Class Action

A privacy class action lawsuit filed against The Cartoon Network Inc., alleging that the television network used its mobile app to collect and distribute private customer information, was tossed by a Georgia federal judge Wednesday, saying that the information at issue wasn’t very personal.

Plaintiff Mark Ellis of North Carolina filed the Cartoon Network class action lawsuit in February. He claimed that he had downloaded the Cartoon Network app onto his android device in early 2013, but that he never agreed to have his personal information released to a third party.

However, “each time a consumer, like the plaintiff, accesses the CN App, a complete record of the user’s video history, along with the user’s Android ID is transmitted to Bango,” which is a data analytics company from England that tracks the behavior of individuals who use websites and mobile applications.

“Once Bango received the Android IDs through the CN App, it was able to reverse engineer the consumers’ identities using the information previously collected from other sources,” U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash, Jr. explained.

Bango kept a comprehensive profile of each person’s digital life, which was later sold to data brokers to be used in target marketing campaigns.

Ellis alleged that according to the Video Privacy Protection Act the Android ID constitutes “personally identifiable information under the VPPA.”

“He alleges that disclosure of his Android ID was a violation of that statute entitling him and the putative class to an injunction and monetary compensation,” Judge Thrash wrote.

The judge explained that “at issue . . . is whether the information disclosed by the video tape service provider could identify specific people and their video viewing habits.”

He concluded that the alleged personal information “disclosed to a third party” did not qualify as a violation of the VPPA because it included an anonymous ID that would have “to take further steps to match that ID to a specific person,” adding that the Android ID was similar to the code on a cable box that can only be used to identify a customer with the person’s billing information.

He also said that “without more, an Android ID does not identify a specific person,” and that “from the information disclosed by the defendant alone, Bango could not identify the plaintiff or any other member of the putative class.”

Judge Thrash did not give Ellis leave to file an amended complaint because he had already filed an amended complaint previously.

“Any additional amendments would be futile because this court finds that the disclosure of an Android ID alone, as happened here, does not qualify as personally identifiable information under the VPPA,” Judge Thrash explained.

The plaintiffs are represented by Rafey S. Balabanian, Benjamin H. Richman and J. Dominick Larry of Edelson PC and Jennifer Auer Jordan of The Jordan Firm LLC.

The Cartoon Network is represented by James A. Lamberth and Alan W. Bakowski of Troutman Sanders LLP and Marc Zwillinger, Jon Frankel and Jeffrey Landis of ZwillGen PLLC.

The Cartoon Network Privacy Class Action Lawsuit is Mark Ellis v. The Cartoon Network, Inc., Case No. 1:14-cv-00484, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.