In re Hulu Privacy Litigation
United States District Court for the Northern District of California
2012 WL 3282960 (2012)
- Written by Angela Patrick, JD
Facts
Hulu, LLC (defendant) operated a website that provided digital video content online. Users could go to Hulu’s website and sign up for either free or paid accounts to access video content. If a user signed up for any Hulu account, Hulu allowed third-party social-media and marketing companies to (1) track the user’s personal information and activity on Hulu’s website and (2) use cookies to access and track the user’s personal information and activity on the user’s computer even when the user was not logged in to Hulu’s website. In addition, the information in these cookies was not encrypted, leaving this collection of the user’s personal information vulnerable to attack and theft. Hulu users who had signed up for Hulu’s free accounts (the users) (plaintiffs) filed a class-action lawsuit against Hulu, claiming that Hulu had unlawfully disclosed the users’ video-viewing selections and other personally identifiable information to the third-party tracking companies in violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA). Hulu moved to dismiss the VPPA claims, arguing that (1) Hulu was not a videotape service provider that was subject to the VPPA, (2) the disclosures were allowed because they occurred in the ordinary course of Hulu’s business, and (3) the users were not consumers under the VPPA because they had not paid for their Hulu subscriptions.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Beeler, J.)
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