The US Supreme Court appeared ready to side with a man who says a Paramount website shared his video history with Facebook. The case could expose many websites to privacy lawsuits.The justices heard arguments in Salazar v. Paramount Global on Wednesday, CNET reported. Paramount’s case did not seem to persuade them, Bloomberg Law reported.

The case

In 2022, Michael Salazar signed up for a newsletter from 247Sports, a Paramount-owned college sports site. He then watched videos on the site while logged into Facebook.

A Meta tracking tool on the site, known as the Pixel, sent details of those videos to Facebook without his consent, he says. He wants to bring a class action seeking up to $2,500 per person.

His claim rests on the Video Privacy Protection Act. Congress passed it in 1988 after a journalist published the video rental history of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork.

Who counts as a consumer?

The law protects ‘consumers’ of video providers. Lower courts threw out Salazar’s case, ruling that a newsletter is not video content, so he did not count.

Paramount’s lawyer, Paul Clement, said Salazar’s reading would turn a law about video rentals into a sweeping internet privacy regime. He warned sites might put videos behind consent walls.

Justice Elena Kagan said websites had two simple choices: get consent or stop selling private data. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said gating videos behind consent would leave the choice to users.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked whether it was right to repurpose a video law for web ad tracking.

“It’s going to be over-broad consent, no doubt,” he said.

What’s at stake

A win for Salazar could open the door to more lawsuits against sites that use tracking tools on video pages. A ruling is expected by next summer.

Paramount, which recently won approval for its Warner Bros deal, is not the only media firm facing viewer lawsuits. Twitch and Amazon face their own class action over AI training on livestreams.