District Court Rules Realtor's Virtual Apartment Tours Elude VPPA Charges
A real estate company that uses prerecorded videos in its business isn't necessarily a video tape service provider as defined by the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), a federal judge ruled as he dropped a VPPA case against a real estate agency Monday.
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In case 4:25-cv-00564, plaintiff Desmond Banks had an apartments.com account, where he viewed prerecorded video tours. Banks alleged that the site, owned by CoStar Realty Information, used tracking pixels and disclosed his viewing information to Facebook without his knowledge or consent.
“No one argues here that CoStar is in the business of rental, sale, or delivery of video cassette tapes," said Judge Cristian Stevens of the U.S. District Court for Eastern Missouri. As such, the only question is whether it's “in the business" of delivering audio-visual materials similar to prerecorded video cassette tapes, the judge added.
It is not, Stevens ruled, even though some of the videos are prerecorded. However, online video clips "have little in common with a physical medium like a video cassette, particularly in the context of the VPPA.”
Even if they did, the judge added, the realty company is not "in the business" of delivering videotapes, as such tapes are "a fraction of a fraction" of how CoStar does business.
This decision came the same day that the U.S. District Court for Northern California ruled LinkedIn must face a VPPA charge in case 5:25-cv-01097, which centers on the platform's training videos (see 2510210043).