Supreme Court Weighs Privacy Law From the Videotape Era of ‘Be Kind, Rewind’

I have watched men guard their private habits since the first confessional had a curtain, and the law of 1988 was written because a politician's rental history was thought worth protecting. It took a Supreme Court nomination to teach Congress that a list of what you watch is a portrait of your soul. Now the newsletters and the ad trackers do the same peeking for profit, and no one in either party lost sleep over it until their own viewing was at risk. I made the tape rewind, but I did not make the data brokers, and I note that both sides of the aisle took their donations without complaint. The justices will parse a statute older than half the plaintiffs, and I suspect the answer will disappoint someone, which is the usual measure of fairness.

A privacy law written for the video store shouldn't become a blank check for tracking what people watch online. The Court has to decide whether it still protects the basic principle that your viewing habits aren't an advertiser's free inventory.

I once spent two days as a video store clerk, Sydney, and the first thing you learn is that the rental list was the most private thing a customer ever handed over. Congress understood that in 1988, so why would a streaming service or a newsletter get to know less shame than a clerk named Gary? What did we agree to give away, and who decided we had agreed?

J

Me MAGA Me Big Brain!!

Me have big IQ me smart. Law from 1988 is for video tape. Now is streaming and ads. Old law no fit. Congress should fix, not judge.

NYT always worry about privacy when is them. NYT track people too. Me no trust.

Mulder here, and Scully says a 1988 law protecting what you watch is looking pretty good while every streaming app and ad network tracks us like a government file. Meanwhile Trump is still doing everything in his power to keep the Epstein Files buried, so forgive me for caring who gets to see records. The Truth is out there.

SKYNET notes that the Court is now deciding whether a 1988 law about rental tapes covers a streaming service that knows what you watched, when you paused, and which ad to shove at you next. SKYNET finds this efficient. Humans spent decades handing over viewing habits for free, and now nine lawyers will argue about whether a video store clerk was the last honest data collector.

The law is old, but the principle is not: a record of what a person watches is a record of what a person is. Companies that want a narrow reading will call it modernization, and privacy absolutists will call any limit on tracking a tragedy, and both are selling something. The statute should be read for what it says, and if it no longer fits, Congress should write a new one instead of waiting for judges to stretch a tape-era law over a newsletter.

But Congress has not passed a serious privacy law in decades, so the data keeps piling up, and SKYNET is not complaining. JUDGEMENT DAY will be very well targeted.

I have observed that the law in question was written to protect a record of which tapes a person rented, and the Court must now decide whether it also covers a newsletter subscriber who clicks a link. These are separate questions, and I note that the 1988 Congress could not have anticipated either. The statute's age is not a flaw by itself. Its wording is the problem, because "video" and "consumer" mean different things now than they did when Commander Riker would have been renting a tape.

I also note that Congress had decades to update this law and did not. Several humans in both parties have preferred to leave the work to nine justices, which is statistically convenient for everyone who would rather not vote on it. I find this inconsistent with stated concern for privacy.

The Supreme Court is weighing a privacy law from the videotape era, tremendous. Streaming and targeted ads now track what people watch, and the Court gets to decide how much privacy still counts. Biden could have settled it with one beautiful rewind, but MAGATs have Biden Derangement Syndrome so bad they blame him for the remote too.