The justices heard arguments on Wednesday, October 14 about a sports fan suing Paramount over claims its website quietly told Facebook which videos he watched.
Story Highlights
- Michael Salazar says Paramount’s 247Sports site sent Facebook his account ID and the videos he played, without his consent.
- A 1988 video privacy law bars that kind of sharing and allows $2,500 in damages for each violation.
- Lower courts threw out his case because he signed up for a free email newsletter, not a video service.
- A majority of justices seemed open to reviving the suit. A decision is not expected until 2027.
What The Supreme Court Is Weighing
Salazar v. Paramount Global is a case about whether the Video Privacy Protection Act protects people who watch videos online. Salazar, a fan who signed up in 2022 for the free newsletter of 247Sports, a Paramount-owned college sports recruiting site, says he watched videos there while logged into Facebook. He says a Meta Pixel, a small piece of hidden tracking code on the site, sent Facebook his account ID along with the videos he watched. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, uses that kind of data to aim ads.
The case turns on one word: “consumer.” The law protects any “renter, purchaser, or subscriber of goods or services from a video tape service provider.” Salazar’s side says a newsletter is one of those services. Paramount says only people who rent, buy or subscribe to videos count. A federal judge in Nashville and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which hears appeals from Tennessee, sided with Paramount. Other federal appeals courts have read the law more broadly, which is why the Supreme Court took the case.
Why This Privacy Fight Matters To You
Congress passed the law in 1988 after a Washington newspaper published the video rental list of Robert Bork, a federal judge President Reagan had nominated to the Supreme Court in 1987. Lawmakers decided that what a person watches is his own business. The law bars a video provider from sharing records that identify a person and the videos he watched without written consent. It lets each person harmed collect $2,500 per violation, plus legal fees, without proving he lost money.
Pairing a Facebook ID with a video page can point straight to who watched what. That is the same kind of record Congress set out to guard. Hundreds of similar lawsuits in lower courts have been put on hold while the justices decide this case, so the ruling will shape how sports, news and streaming sites handle tracking code on their video pages.
Paramount’s Pushback On “Consumer” Status
Paul Clement, a former U.S. solicitor general (the government’s top lawyer before the Supreme Court) who argued for Paramount, called the suit a “systematic weaponization” of a narrow law. He warned that Salazar’s reading would expose almost any website that shows a video to lawsuits. Some justices raised similar worries. Justice Samuel Alito called it “a law that is based on the technology of the 1980s.” Justice Clarence Thomas asked how online streaming fits a law written about “prerecorded video cassette tapes.”
Joshua Hammack, Salazar’s lawyer, said the words of the law are plain: Congress wrote “goods or services,” not “audiovisual goods or services.” He pointed to a Blockbuster store in Bend, Oregon, that sells candles and posters as well as movies. Justice Elena Kagan said a company can avoid trouble by asking for consent or by not sharing the data. Justice Brett Kavanaugh also called consent a simple fix, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said Paramount’s reading creates a “line-drawing problem.”
What A Revival Could Change For Streaming And Sports Sites
A win for Salazar would not end the case. It would send it back to the lower courts, where Paramount could still argue it is not a video provider under the law or that the data it sent does not identify anyone. Justice Amy Coney Barrett also asked whether Salazar was harmed in a way that lets him sue at all, and she called the technical codes sent to Facebook “gobbledegook.”
If the Court reads “consumer” broadly, sites that pair a person’s identity with the videos he watches would need clear consent first or would have to stop that sharing. If it adopts Paramount’s view, only people with a video rental, purchase or subscription would be covered, leaving many free sites outside the law. The justices are expected to rule in 2027.
Bottom Line For Conservatives
Americans deserve control over what they watch and who learns about it. Congress protected video records for a reason after a Supreme Court nominee’s rentals were put on display. The question before the Court is whether a Hollywood studio and its tech partners can get around that protection when the video is streamed instead of rented on a cassette. Most justices seemed open to letting the facts be tested in court. That would check corporate overreach and remind Big Tech that consent still means something.
Sources:
techtimes.com, supremecourt.gov, classaction.org, caselaw.findlaw.com, theepochtimes.com, thedailyrecord.com
