On Monday, the plaintiff pursuing a Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) suit against Patreon Inc., an online membership business that features exclusive video content subscribers can pay for monthly, pointed the court to a favorable decision rendered in another VPPA case. There, the District of Massachusetts upheld the complaint over Boston Globe Media Partners LLC’s bid to dismiss it.
The Patreon user’s statement of recent decision attached the six-page ruling against the Globe, a multimedia provider which creates and hosts hundreds if not thousands of videos as stand-alone content, as supplements to articles, and as content sponsored by advertisers. There, the plaintiff accused the Globe of disclosing its digital subscribers’ personally identifiable information like users’ Facebook ID, email address, first name, last name, mailing address to Facebook without their permission.
Specifically, the suit said that the Globe website hosts the Facebook Tracking Pixel, a snippet of software code that tracks subscribers and the actions they take by capturing their website movements and sending a record of that action to Facebook. The opinion also made mention of the Globe’s use of Facebook’s “Advanced Matching” tool, which transmits even more subscriber information to Facebook.
In mid-September, the court ruled that the plaintiff alleged the basic elements of a VPPA claim: that the Globe delivers various types of video content to its digital subscribers and that the Globe knowingly discloses subscribers’ personal information and information about what videos they watch on the Globe website to Facebook through its use of Pixel and Advanced Matching tools. The plaintiff and other digital subscribers of the Globe’s video and other multimedia services are plausibly consumers as defined by the VPPA, the court further found.
The case against Patreon levels similar contentions at the defendant for its use of Pixel. Patreon moved to dismiss in August, arguing among other defenses that the VPPA is unconstitutional. Given that challenge, the United States asked for and was granted more time to consider whether it should intervene to defend the VPPA. It has until November 4 to decide.
Counsel for the plaintiff is Girard Sharp LLP while Patreon is represented by The Norton Law Firm PC.
