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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.

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.