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Court Dismisses Redbox VPPA Class Action Lawsuit
By Matt O’Donnell
DVD-rental-kiosk giant Redbox will not have to face a class action lawsuit accusing it of illegally storing and distributing customers’ personal information after the 7th Circuit of Appeals dismissed a critical portion of the complaint.
The Redbox class action lawsuit was brought under the Video Privacy Protection Act, which prohibits companies that rent movies from keeping personally identifying information about their customers longer than necessary.
Redbox violated the VPPA, the class action lawsuit said, by maintaining “a veritable digital dossier on millions of consumers nationwide. These records contain not only consumers’ credit card number and billing/contact information, but also a highly detailed account of the consumer’s video programming viewing history.”
The Redbox class action lawsuit claimed the company failed to destroy personally identifiable information “as soon as practicable, but no later than one year from the date the information is no longer necessary for the purpose for which it was collected,” as required under the VPPA.
The class action lawsuit claimed customers’ personally identifiable information should have been destroyed after 90 days, which is the cutoff period Redbox uses to refund charges.
The class action lawsuit sought $2,500 per violation of the Act, as well as attorneys’ fees and interest.
Redbox sought to dismiss the class action lawsuit on the grounds that the destruction provision of the VPPA could not be enforced by a VPPA lawsuit for damages.
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, ruling that the only prohibited act under the VPPA that warrants damages is disclosure of a viewer’s video information. Consumers cannot use a VPPA lawsuit to collect damages for record destruction violations, the court said.
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Updated March 14th, 2012
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