Hulu Faces Privacy Test in Court
August 15th, 2012
The New York Times - Can a privacy law passed in the era of videotape rentals be applied in the era of Internet streaming? Hulu, the online video content provider, is about to face the test. A lawsuit filed in a federal court in California says Hulu violated its users’ privacy by sharing their viewing history with companies that could in turn offer them tailored advertisements. The case rests on a 1988 law, the Video Privacy Protection Act, intended to protect the privacy of video rental records. It was passed by Congress after a newspaper obtained records of what movies the conservative Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork had rented, and published an article based on them….