VHS-Era Privacy Law Still Causing Headaches For Streaming Video

jfruh (300774) writes "The Video Privacy Protection Act, a 1988 law that made it illegal for a video store to share your rental history, has thrown up roadblocks for modern-day streaming video sites. Last year Congress amended the law to make it possible for you to share your Netflix viewing history with your social media friends, as long as you opt in. But what does "opting in" entail? Hulu is now on the receiving end of a lawsuit over the fact that clicking the Facebook "like" button on a viewing page shares that viewing activity on Facebook."

Comments

Not causing headaches, preventing companies from a

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a case of an outdated law holding a company from doing a good thing. This is a case of a law being accuratly applied to prevent companies from sharing personal information without any reasonable expectation of assent.

I mean come on, can anyone say with a straight face that standing in a punlic forumn and saying outloud that you pizza gives pizza hut permission to share your purchase and order history?

Fubared priorities

[wiredlogic]

So our video viewing preferences are rigidly protected by big government but if we want to peaceably assemble to demonstrate and protest we must be confined to a chain-link fenced "free speech zone" in a parking lot somewhere in an out of the way industrial zone.

More like some Congressman doesn't want his wife to find out about all the midget porn.

Re:Fubared priorities

[Registered Coward v2]

So our video viewing preferences are rigidly protected by big government but if we want to peaceably assemble to demonstrate and protest we must be confined to a chain-link fenced "free speech zone" in a parking lot somewhere in an out of the way industrial zone.

More like some Congressman doesn't want his wife to find out about all the midget porn.

Sort of. This is the "Bork Act" so named because when Robert Bork was nominated to SCOTUS his video rental habits were made public; no doubt causing concern amongst our illustrious members of Congress and Senators that theirs would appear in the next attack when they ran for reelection. hence, the concern for protecting our privacy trumpeted the ability of companies to profit off of it.

Re:Fubared priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

So our video viewing preferences are rigidly protected by big government but if we want to peaceably assemble to demonstrate and protest we must be confined to a chain-link fenced "free speech zone" in a parking lot somewhere in an out of the way industrial zone.

More like some Congressman doesn't want his wife to find out about all the midget porn.

TFA: "During debate over his nomination, Bork's video rental history was leaked to the press. His video rental history was unremarkable, and included such harmless titles as A Day at the Races, Ruthless People, and The Man Who Knew Too Much. Writer Michael Dolan, who obtained a copy of the hand-written list of rentals, wrote about it for the Washington City Paper. Dolan justified accessing the list on the ground that Bork himself had stated that Americans only had such privacy rights as afforded them by direct legislation. The incident led to the enactment of the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act."

I used to think the real moral of the story was that if we want to have privacy, we have to demonstrate that the same technologies that violate our privacy can also have negative political consequences for them.

Consider this: In 1988, the fact that a Supreme Court Justice Nominee's completely boring video rental list -- and what it implied for the political futures of Congressmen and Senators whose video rental history was, shall we say, not so boring -- absolutely terrified politicians, because politicians could actually lose their seats over scandals.

Today, when we find out that an anti-gay politician is toe-tapping in a bathroom stall or sexting his underage Congressional pages or is otherwise compromised, we shrug it off and laugh for a day, then vote some other hypocrite into office, but such scandals are no longer national news.

The only thing that would do it would be a data dump of everything NSA has on sitting Congresspersons. And now I realize that things that would be hit those selectors are probably the only things pre-emptively excluded from the database, because the existance of such records are the only thing that could shut the programme down.

The real surprise of 1988 was that the Bork controversy happened so fast that they passed a law that protected everyone, not just themselves. They haven't made that mistake since.

Re:Fubared priorities

[alostpacket]

I always thought it had something to do with the Swedish Chef.

I wonder what his viewing history would be like.

Re:Fubared priorities

[Calavar]

The issue here isn't the stupidity of the users, but the article written by an uninformed author and an equally misleading /. summary.

The real issue is that whenever a page includes a Facebook like button, it has to reference the requisite Javascript files that are hosted on Facebook servers. So whenever you load a Hulu video page, your browser pings Facebook with information about which Hulu page you are visiting simply to render the button. It doesn't matter whether or not you click the like button: Facebook knows which Hulu page you watched either way. And since Facebook keeps track of this information even when you are logged out of your account, there is definitely no opt-in on the part of the user. IMHO, this lawsuit is completely justified.

This is a problem ?

[redelm]

I, for one, dislike my history being sold to other merchants. Even if it means I pay more for a service, privacy has value. I slways opt-out, but this sort of marketing is deeply invasive and subject to NSA-esque abuse in targetted cases.

One can only imagine this kind of world now

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a world where privacy is the default setting. Truly mind blowing.

I disagree with the article's author

[Registered Coward v2]

After I RTFA, it appears the author's stance is "you gave Hulu permission by clicking Like, after all Like is supposed to let you tell people what you like. Thus, HULU should not be held responsible under the law for sharing your viewing history." My issue with that is, if I understand what HULU did, is clicking Like shares anything you watched and what you are watching, not just the original video, essentially making your history available without your consent. That is exactly what the law is designed to prevent. I find it a big jump from saying "I Like "Allo Allo S1E4" and taking that is "I consent to let you share my entire viewing history."

Re:I disagree with the article's author

[michaelmalak]

clicking Like shares anything you watched and what you are watching, not just the original video, essentially making your history available without your consent

Indeed, this shows why we still need the now-amended VPPA.

The blog author is wrong on this one. The original GigaOm article the blog author was commenting on was much more factual.

You talk as if it is a bad thing....

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

If at all there is something to complain about, it is the fact that we did not use the law to extend VHS rentals to web browsing history and stop sites from storing, selling and buying the browsing history of the visitors. Had we extended this law earlier to logically include all the thing that ought to be private and unstorable by thirdparties and service providers, the world might be a better place today.

Re:Not causing headaches, preventing companies fro

[KitFox]

Except that in this case it's more accurately "going to a pizza parlor, finding out that they have a little flag in the pepperoni pizza portion of the menu that you can stick on your lawn that says 'I like peperoni pizza', putting that flag on your lawn, and then suing the pizza company for having the lawn flag available."

Though in reality, r'ing tfa hints that it may hinge more on the fact that the inclusion of a like button on the page at all automatically shares with Facebook the fact that you were even on the page due to referrer information. The 'Like' button itself is not Hulu sharing the data with Facebook, that's the clicker sharing the data with Facebook.

Re:Not causing headaches, preventing companies fro

[gnupun]

Wish this law would be extended to other products and services like DVD purchases, retail purchases, library check outs, grocery purchases, restaurant orders etc.. This law is only a headache, if you're out to commit a crime (invasion of privacy).

Re:Not causing headaches, preventing companies fro

[gnupun]

Terrorists have replaced communists. The laws you mention are old. One change enacted by the Patriot act was to track library check outs.

"The Patriot Act gives federal authorities virtually unchecked authority to search our customers' records and raises concern that government is monitoring what people are reading," said ABFFE President Chris Finan. "

And this:

Libraries in Santa Cruz, Calif., posted signs warning patrons that the FBI may access the records of what books they borrow.

From fox news

The wholesale tracking of all books is suspicious. What business does the govt have knowing who read the latest Dr. Seuss books? The patriot act should have allowed tracking only those books related to terrorism -- weapon making books, books about extreme violence, etc.