A Pasadena man has filed a federal class action lawsuit against Paramount-Plus that accuses the video-streaming company of disclosing customers’ viewing data to third parties such as Facebook and TikTok in violation of a 36-year-old federal law.
Plaintiff Victor Cho filed the legal complaint on Nov. 1 in the Southern District of New York, where Paramount-Plus is based. The lawsuit alleges that the defendant knowingly and intentionally sends users’ personal information to third parties without their knowledge and in violation of a 1988 law, the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA).
The collection of personal identifiers and viewing habits is accomplished through “the Facebook Pixel” and other tracking technologies that Paramount-Plus allows to be installed on its website, according to the lawsuit.
“(The) defendant’s motivation for using the Facebook Pixel and related Facebook Business Tools is simple – it financially benefits (the) defendant in the form of advertising and information services that (the) defendant would otherwise have to pay for,” the complaint states.
Paramount-Plus also employs TikTok Pixels and cookies in its operations to allow TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese parent firm called ByteDance Ltd., to receive personal viewing information about the streaming service’s customers.
“TikTok allows web and app developers to incorporate its analytics tools into their platforms free of charge for the purposes of gaining customer insights, measuring customer interactions and optimizing marketing performance,” the lawsuit says.
The proposed class action indicates that there are at least 100 class members, that combined claims will exceed $5 million not including interest and attorney fees and that parties are domiciled in different states.
Neither Paramount-Plus nor the plaintiff’s attorney opted to provide a comment about the lawsuit.
The federal Video Privacy Protection Act was enacted in the wake of President Ronald Reagan’s failed nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court. A movie rental store disclosed Bork’s video rental history to a Washington newspaper, prompting privacy concerns among federal lawmakers.
Initially, the law applied only to video rental stores, but in 2012 Congress amended the statute by saying its prohibition of such disclosures of customers’ personal information extends to “on-demand” cable services and online streaming services, according to the lawsuit.
The law allows streaming-service customers who believe they have suffered a violation of the law to file private lawsuits, including class actions. Cho’s lawsuit seeks statutory damages of $2,500 for each violation of the VPPA.
In a blog post this week, Dentons legal practice, which defends clients against privacy-related claims, argued that entertainment providers often don’t have access to the data collected by embedded computer code that tracks customer behaviors.
“Importantly, the website provider doesn’t necessarily have access to these user IDs – and often does not – but the respective service provider does have such access,” the blog post states.
In addition, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers the states of New York, Connecticut and Vermont, last month expanded the reach of the VPPA, concluding that the law’s definition of “goods and services” obtained by consumers is not limited to “audio-visual materials.”