Report from MediaPost
In Brief – A panel of the Second Circuit Federal Court of Appeals has ruled that web companies don’t violate the federal Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), a 1980’s law designed to keep private the names of videos that customers rented, when a website uses Meta’s “pixel tracking” technology to facilitate targeted online advertising. The ruling reaffirmed a 2024 district court decision to dismiss a class-action complaint by Brandon Hughes against the National Football League that alleged the use of Meta tracking code on the NFL.com website violated the VPPA by disclosing users’ Facebook IDs, combined with the videos they viewed, to Meta. While the district court ruling was centered on the determination that the NFL was not alleged to be a “video tape service provider”, the appeals panel ruled that the data allegedly sent to Meta about Hughes was not “personally identifiable” because it wouldn’t allow an “ordinary person” to identify Hughes and learn which videos he watched. The latest ruling is the second time in recent months that a Second Circuit appeals court panel has rejected VPPA claims related to Meta’s digital ad tracking technology, and “effectively shuts the door” to such claims in the words of the court.
Context – In the last three years, class action attorneys throughout the country have sued a range of businesses with websites offering video clips, including newspapers, television companies, and other streaming video providers, for allegedly violating the VPPA by embedding analytics tools like the Meta Pixel on their pages. Ironically, the last two major Second Circuit VPPA decisions, Solomon v Flipps Media, and now Hughes v the NFL, which both dismiss VPPA claims, came less than a year after the Second Circuit Court of Appeals allowed a VPPA lawsuit against the NBA proceed, a decision that accelerated the filing of VPPA class action lawsuits. The NBA is appealing that ruling the US Supreme Court with the backing of the NFL and other targets. Only this month, a VPPA class action lawsuit targeting the PGA Tour for the operations of its website and the use of Meta’s trackers was filed in Florida.