Prime Video Subscribers Fight for Privacy Rights

Consumers of Amazon Prime Video are taking their privacy concerns to a federal appellate court, hoping to revive a claim that the company shared their online video viewing information with Amazon affiliates. The lawsuit, originally brought by Virginia resident Meredith Beagle and others, was recently dismissed by U.S. District Court Judge James Robart in Seattle. Now, attorneys for Beagle and the other consumers have appealed this dismissal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, although substantive arguments have not yet been filed.

The legal battle began when Beagle and her fellow consumers alleged that Amazon violated the federal Video Privacy Protection Act, which dates back to 1988. This act prohibits video rental companies from sharing identifiable information about individuals’ video viewing history without their explicit consent. The law was put in place after a Washington, D.C. newspaper obtained Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork’s video rental history from a local store.

Amazon argued to Judge Robart that the claims against them should be dismissed for various reasons, one being that even if the allegations in the complaint were true, they wouldn’t prove that the company shared personally identifiable information about the videos watched by Prime users. Robart ultimately sided with Amazon, stating that the allegations, if proven, would not demonstrate that Amazon “affirmatively disclosed” users’ personally identifiable information but rather only suggested the “mere possibility” of such a disclosure.