The plaintiffs bar is well known for pushing the boundaries of existing (and sometimes very old) laws with new and novel privacy claims. The most recent targets of this trend are the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), 18 U.S.C. Section 2710; and state wiretap laws, particularly the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), Cal. Penal Code Section 630 et seq. Plaintiffs’ claims seek to extend dated statutory requirements to modern technologies, such as online video players, chatbots session replay tools and voice recognition software. Many of these actions have advanced past the motion to dismiss stage, which means that more of these claims are likely to follow.

The Video Privacy Protection Act

The VPPA was enacted in 1998 to prevent video rental services from sharing private information about their customers’ rental history. The law prohibits a “video tape service provider” (i.e., a person engaged in the business of rental, sale, or delivery of prerecorded video cassette tapes or similar audio-visual materials) from knowingly disclosing “personally identifiable information” (i.e., information that identifies a person as having requested specific video materials from a video tape service provider) concerning any “consumer” (i.e., a renter, purchaser, or subscriber of goods or services from a video tape service provider) to another person without “informed, written consent.”