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Comment by bigmattystyles | Hacker News Reader

The video store example is funny because iirc, it wasn’t until someone high up/very involved in government got bit by it. During Robert Bork’s failed Supreme Court confirmation, a reporter figured out he rented porn. Maybe it was something less raunchy / embarrassing than porn but either way, iirc, they got that law on the books fast after that….

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The leak was inspired by Bork's opposition to privacy protections beyond those explicitly outlined in the constitution. [0]

On September 25, the City Paper published Dolan's survey of Bork's rentals in a cover story titled "The Bork Tapes". The revealed tapes proved to be modest, innocuous, and non-salacious, consisting of a garden-variety of films such as thrillers, British drama, and those by Alfred Hitchcock. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bork_Supreme_Court_nomi...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bork_tapes#:~:text=On%20Septem...

The VPPA very much applies to online entities. Netflix can collect all the info it wants about you, but is very much limited in what it can share with external parties.

If anything, the law has given cover to shady walled garden business practices that would not have survived otherwise.

Last time I looked up the Bork bill, I read that it was extended to streaming sites during the Obama regime.

You read wrongly. The 2013 amendment merely allowed customers to consent to disclosure electronically via the Internet. Before then, it had to be in writing. It didn't change 18 USC § 2710's explicit application only to a "video tape service provider", and that is how the law still reads today.

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