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Next month, the Supreme Court will decide how a privacy law from 1988 applies to the modern internet. 🧵 on the case ⬇️

The case, Salazar v. Paramount Global, asks the Supreme Court to resolve a circuit split about who qualifies as a consumer under the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 (VPPA).

Congress originally passed the VPPA as a reaction to Judge Robert Bork’s video rental history being made public during his nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987. The VPPA made clear that it is a violation of the fundamental right to privacy to disclose video viewing habits without consent.

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In this case, Michael Salazar alleges that Paramount Global violated the VPPA by sharing his video viewing history from its website 247Sports.com with Meta through a third-party tracking pixel embedded in the site. These tracking pixels are embedded in sites all across the internet.

EPIC filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court arguing that a definition of “consumer” that includes an individual that subscribed to any goods or services from a Video Tape Service Provider is a plain-text interpretation of the law and is consistent with the law’s intent.