Privacy for games, streaming and media: children's privacy enforcement, VPPA video tracking claims, in-game data and age assurance.
Games and streaming services combine young audiences with detailed behavioral tracking, drawing both COPPA enforcement and VPPA litigation. This hub covers both.
One phrase in the Video Privacy Protection Act — "goods or services from a video tape service provider" — has produced an open split among three courts of appeals over who may sue. The Supreme Court granted review on 26 January 2026 and has set argument for 14 October 2026. This post sets out what each opinion actually reasoned.
Read more →The FTC published amendments to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule on April 22, 2025. They added a separate-consent requirement for third-party disclosure, a written retention policy and a prohibition on indefinite retention, two new categories of personal information, a written security program, and staggered obligations for safe harbor programs.
Read more →The VPPA is short, oddly drafted, and enforced entirely by private plaintiffs rather than by any agency. This guide walks the statute section by section: the four definitions that set its perimeter, the six disclosures it permits, the consent form Congress rewrote in 2013, the records-destruction duty a court of appeals has held is not privately enforceable, and the damages that drive the docket.
Read more →COPPA turns on two questions that decide everything downstream: whether a service is directed to children under 13, and whether the operator has actual knowledge it is collecting from one. This guide covers the multi-factor test, what counts as personal information, the approved consent methods, and the state laws now layered on top.
Read more →The Video Privacy Protection Act was passed in 1988 after a newspaper published a Supreme Court nominee's video rental history. It now generates a steady stream of claims against websites that embed video and third-party tracking pixels. Two questions divide the courts: who counts as a subscriber, and what qualifies as personally identifiable information.
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