The Supreme Court is set to hear oral argument in Salazar v. Paramount Global, a case testing how the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) applies to modern online platforms. The VPPA was enacted after a journalist published Judge Robert Bork's video rental history, and it bars video tape service providers from knowingly disclosing personally identifiable information about consumers. Michael Salazar alleges that Paramount, through a Pixel on its 247Sports.com site, shared his video-viewing history with Facebook without his consent while he was logged into both services.
A federal district court dismissed the lawsuit, and the Sixth Circuit affirmed, holding that Salazar was not a 'consumer' under the VPPA because the definition requires a subscription to audio-visual content. The newsletter he received was not such content. Salazar, however, argues that the statute's definition of consumer — "any renter, purchaser, or subscriber of goods or services from a video tape service provider" — contains no limit on the type of goods or services, and thus covers any offering from such a provider.
Paramount counters that the VPPA was meant to protect video rental history specifically, not every purchase a video store might make, and warns that Salazar's reading would turn the law into an unworkable internet-privacy regime with harsh penalties. The justices' ruling will clarify whether a 1988 statute can reach data-sharing practices that did not exist at the time of its enactment.