A California judge has ruled that Hulu must face a class-action privacy lawsuit for allegedly breaking the Video Privacy Protection Act from 1988. The act prevents public sharing of video rental data without consent which Hulu allegedly did by illegally sharing private information with comScore and Facebook.
Hulu has failed to persuade a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit accusing the video streaming service of illegally sharing users’ viewing history with Facebook Inc and business metrics company comScore Inc. In San Francisco on Friday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler rejected Hulu’s argument that viewers needed to show actual injury to recover damages, even if they qualified as “aggrieved” persons under a 1988 federal law protecting the privacy of video renters.