• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, January 14, 2024

A federal judge has given the green light to a class action privacy suit filed by two consumers against Hearst Television Inc.

U.S. District Judge Richard G. Stearns denied Heart’s motion to kill the action late last week. 

The plaintiffs, Michele Saunders and Richard Hayden, charge that Hearst violated the Video Privacy Protection Act by disclosing their personally identifiable information (PII) to third parties, according to papers on file with the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Prior to filing this case, plaintiffs’ counsel “retained a private research company to analyze what, if any, personal data is transmitted by Hearst’s apps when a user watches a video,” Stearns writes.

He continues, “The analysis determined that Hearst integrates two application programming interfaces (APIs) into its apps: the Braze API and the DoubleClick API.”

Stearns’ conclusion? “At a high level, Hearst shares data about its apps’ users with Braze and Google (the owner of the DoubleClick API) through these APIs to improve its marketing and analytics.” 

In addition, Stearns notes that “Congress intended to “preserve personal privacy with respect to the rental, purchase or delivery of video tapes or similar audio visual materials.” 

Restricting Hearst from disclosing to third parties the precise videos that plaintiffs viewed alongside plaintiffs’ PII “directly and materially advances that interest."

The judge also wrote that “the court can conceive of no legitimate non- commercial First Amendment interest of Hearst that its exploitation of plaintiffs’ PII serves.”