Who Counts As A VPPA Consumer
A statute written in 1988 about video rental records now decides class actions over website tracking pixels. Whether a plaintiff counts as a VPPA consumer has split three federal appellate courts. The Supreme Court hears the question on 14 October 2026.
The Video Privacy Protection Act is short, old and unusually generous to plaintiffs. Anyone sitting the CIPP/US should know how a statute about video rental records became a fixture of US privacy litigation.
What the VPPA actually says
Three definitions in 18 U.S.C. ยง 2710(a) do the work.
A consumer is “any renter, purchaser, or subscriber of goods or services from a video tape service provider”. Personally identifiable information is information identifying a person as having requested or obtained specific video materials or services from such a provider. A video tape service provider is a person in the business of renting, selling or delivering prerecorded video cassette tapes or similar audio visual materials.
Subsection (b) bars a provider from knowingly disclosing that information. Exceptions cover the consumer, informed written consent, law enforcement process, address-only marketing lists and the ordinary course of business.
Subsection (c) is why the litigation exists. An aggrieved person may recover actual damages of at least $2,500 in liquidated damages, plus punitive damages, fees and costs. The limitation period is two years. Multiply that floor across a website’s newsletter list and the arithmetic explains itself.
The split over who is a VPPA consumer
Every modern claim runs through one fact pattern. A site with video content installs an advertising pixel. The pixel transmits an identifier alongside what somebody watched. A newsletter subscriber then sues.
The question is whether that person is a VPPA consumer. The definition covers a subscriber of “goods or services” from a video tape service provider, and courts disagree about which goods and services count.
Reading it broadly, the Second Circuit found for the plaintiff in Salazar v. National Basketball Association on 15 October 2024. The Seventh Circuit followed in Gardner v. Me-TV. On that approach, subscribing to any of a provider’s goods or services makes you a VPPA consumer, audiovisual or not.
The Sixth Circuit’s narrower reading
Salazar v. Paramount Global, decided on 3 April 2025, went the other way. The majority held that a person is a “consumer” only when he subscribes to “goods or services” in the nature of “video cassette tapes or similar audio visual materials”.
The panel disagreed openly with the Second and Seventh Circuits. Judge Bloomekatz dissented in part.
The practical effect is large. Under the narrow reading a free newsletter subscriber who happens to watch a clip is no VPPA consumer at all. Under the broad reading that same person sits inside the statute, and so do millions like them.
Why the Supreme Court took the VPPA question
The Court granted certiorari in Salazar v. Paramount Global, No. 25-459, on 26 January 2026. The question presented asks whether “goods or services from a video tape service provider” reaches everything the provider offers or only its audiovisual offerings.
Oral argument is scheduled for 14 October 2026. The docket shows amicus support for the respondent from Meta Platforms, the Chamber of Commerce and the Entertainment Software Association among others.
Nothing is settled until the Court rules. What a privacy professional can say today is that VPPA exposure depends on the circuit, and that a site’s newsletter has become a litigation surface.
What this means for the exam
The CIPP/US Body of Knowledge, the IAPP document listing what the exam can test, places the VPPA in the telecommunications and marketing cluster. It sits alongside the TCPA, CAN-SPAM and CPNI. Questions there usually give you a medium and a disclosure, then ask which statute governs.
Learn the VPPA by its three moving parts. Who is covered. What counts as personally identifiable information. What disclosure the statute permits. Then remember the private right of action and the $2,500 floor, because the exam likes statutes that individuals can enforce themselves.
The wider point recurs across the syllabus. A general-purpose provision can reach conduct nobody drafting it imagined, which is the pattern behind Section 5 of the FTC Act too. Scenario questions that cross statutes reward the reading discipline set out in the guide to IAPP exam scenarios.
If the sheer volume of US statutes makes the exam feel unmanageable, the CIPP/US Exam Question Masterclass works through how a question narrows the field before you reach the options.
