Google And Viacom Oppose Nick.com users Bid To Revive privateness battle
Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, (June 23, 2015)
a gaggle of web users under 13 haven’t any grounds to revive a privateness lawsuit alleging that Viacom and Google wrongly used tracking expertise at the kid’s website Nick.com, the businesses argue in new courtroom papers.
In papers filed last week, Google and Viacom urge the 3rd Circuit court docket of Appeals to reject Nick.com users’ argument that the use of tracking technology violates a number of rules, including the the Video privacy protection Act. That measure, pased in 1988, prohibits video apartment firms from disclosing individually identifiable information about customers without their permission
U.S. District court choose Stanley Chesler in New Jersey “as it should be held that the nameless information transmitted with the aid of Viacom, ‘with out more,’ is not within the scope of VPPA for the reason that statute prohibits simplest disclosures that the discloser knows will identify a specific person as having watched a particular video,” Viacom argues in papers filed ultimate week with the 3rd Circuit.
The entertainment firm also urges the court docket to reject the view that cookie-primarily based knowledge should be thought to be “in my view identifiable” if Google is ready to uncover users’ names with the aid of combining cookies with out of doors information. those arguments “turn entirely on speculation that an allegedly omniscient and all-powerful Google one way or the other can discover an individual’s identity, even when Viacom does no longer understand it and did not expose it,” Viacom says.
Viacom adds that the Nick.com customers lack “standing” to sue, because they weren’t injured by the alleged tracking. “At most, [the Nick.com visitors] have argued that Viacom used anonymous knowledge about their internet process to facilitate the supply of the very promotion that makes Viacom’s websites available totally free to them and the remainder of the public,” Viacom says in its appellate papers.
Google makes similar arguments, but additionally says it shouldn’t face swimsuit for allegedly violating the video privacy legislation when it wasn’t the video supplier at Nick.com. the search company adds that the lawsuit does not allege that it disclosed choosing knowledge, only that it bought the data from Viacom.
The struggle dates to late 2012, when attorneys for a bunch of children underneath 13 alleged in a possible category-action that Viacom violated the video privateness statute with the aid of disclosing data by means of cookies. The users’ legal professionals also argue that Google “illegally bought” the data.
in addition to the video privateness regulation, the kids’s lawyers contended that Viacom and Google violated the federal wiretap legislation, and a new Jersey “intrusion upon seclusion” legislation.
Chesler disregarded the lawsuit last year. however despite the fact that he rejected all the Nick.com users’ criminal theories, he wrote that the customers had “identified behavior that may be priceless of additional legislative and govt attention.”
(108)
