SCOTUS to decide if 1988 video tape privacy law applies to internet uses | Hacker News Reader

SCOTUS to decide if 1988 video tape privacy law applies to internet uses

jurist.org

59 pointsvoxadam27 comments

The video tape law was created basically a reaction to someone finding out and revealing Robert Bork (then a SCOTUS nominee)'s video rentals. The rentals themselves were bland, featuring stuff like Disney films, but I guess Congress got scared. It passed by wide margins at the time. I wonder if they are still scared the same way.

Background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act

It's one of my favorite examples of those in power absolutely losing their shit when surveillance and violation of privacy happens to them.

Now they'd just pass a law providing only themselves privacy, like how chat control in the EU always has an exemption for those in power.

Would be interesting if this gets through, though I imagine clickwrap agreements largely negate this anyway. Would be cool if informed consent required a snail mail agreement, might hurt adoption/growth metrics enough that big cos would stop being so greedy. Though that idea could backfire itself.

How will this benefit big business and punish everyone else?

> How will this benefit big business

I don't think it's too cynical to say (based on their voting record) that that's the exact question the Heritage Foundation alums on the court as asking themselves at this moment.

This law was passed as a response to a business leaking the rental history of a political figure, not for protecting the privacy of individuals. So, as long as a business doesn’t leak a political figure’s private information, they can pretty much do whatever they want, the court case is just a reminder.

I know what POTUS is, but extending the "OTUS" to other people is a tad irritating. What's the SC stand for?

The first sentence of the article should make that clear. In any case, it's a pretty well-established abbreviation in US policy discussions.

supreme court

Thanks, I'm not a USA person.

I can highly recommend developing a habit of selecting words you don't understand, opening the context menu, and hitting search. Takes somewhere between 2 and 10 seconds to look up acronyms this way.

A fun fact, SCOTUS as a term predates POTUS by over a decade. So actually -OTUS was extended to POTUS from SCOTUS, not the other way around. Though both are well over 100 years old at this point. I think POTUS is probably the more well used term today, but in any legal context SCOTUS gets used more or less constantly.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/scotus-potus-flotus

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