NFL us Supreme Court Amicus letter to support the NBA in the VPPA case

The NFL and the NBA are perhaps competing leagues, but they have teamed up to apply for the US Court of Justice, to stop hundreds of collecting lawsuits for class lawsuits against leagues, universities, media companies and other companies that use Facebook cookies to follow user data.

Last Friday, Kannon K. Shanmugam, Matthew Clarida and other lawyers from Paul submitted an Amicus letter with the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of the NFL. The NFL calls on the court to accept the NBA petition for review Salazar v. NBAA case in which the NBA is accused of the NBA achieved a dismissal of Salazar's complaint in the southern district of New York, but in October in October the U.S. Appeals Court cleared the dismissal for the second circle and sent the case back to the court.

The NFL has exposed VPPA lawsuits with analog facts. The same applies to the NHL, MLB, NASCAR, LAFFIELD (representative of the University of Texas, the University of Florida and the University of Nebraska), the New England Patriots, NBCuniversal, Peacock TV, Paramount Global (247 Sports), Baseball America And many other companies.

The NFL warns that if these complaints prevail, athletic could be liable if a fan buys or in any other way acquires a league article – including a play ticket, clothing, memory, a newsletter or a mobile offer – and then the website of the league to see highlights or other video teams.

The NFL argues that the disclosure of data about the video graduate compared to Meta is “no real damage at all”. On the contrary, the NFL claims that consumer surveys point out that almost 80% of people prefer to look at advertising rather than pay for the currently free content.

“Consumers are aware that the use of cookies enables personalized advertising and they realize that a large part of the content they show on the Internet as a result is free,” says NFL.

Although a fan, whose video observation data is shared, has probably not suffered any kind of damage that the law should remedy, the VPPA delivers minimal legal compensation of $ 2,500 per plaintiff. This may sound like a drop in the bucket for a multibillion dollar league like the NFL or NBA, but the NFL finds that legal damage can “add up quickly” in a collection campaign, in which potentially numerous consumers are entitled to class.

As the NFL emphasizes, the number of potential VPPA plaintiffs against a large sports league is massive because they have hundreds of millions of fans. Millions of these fans buy or receive an article in a league at some point and then look at league and team websites to watch free videos. In order to emphasize the risk of high damage, the league quotes settlements of collective lawsuits that affect VPPA claims for up to 92 million US dollars.

With the help of the NFL, the NBA also faces a demanding chance of convincing the court Salazar. The court grants only about 1% of the petitions and at least four of the judges must give the fingers crossed up. A case on Facebook Cookies and NBA.com videos seems to be like little fries for a dish that tends to check matters of the greatest importance, including those who are questions of life and death. The law on the game could also appear relatively unimportant. The VPPA called the Bork Bill and was an answer to a newspaper that gave up the video rental story of judge Robert Bork when he was a candidate for the Supreme Court of the United States in 1987.

However, the NFL claims that the court should hear Salazar Because the appeal courts have issued contradictory decisions. This means that people and companies in different parts of the country effectively have different rights, depending on where legal claims are raised.

The second circuit and the Seventh Circuit have found that a person can be a “consumer” in the sense of the VPPA without bought, rented or subscribed to audiovisual assets, but the sixth court achieved the opposite conclusion.

“The resulting conflict,” claims the NFL, “makes this case undeniably ripe for the review of the court.” The NFL also claims that VPPA collection lawsuits are now an “urgent problem”, since they have companies “with massive liability that unexpectedly and with a conceivable damage that consumers suffered”.

The NFL calls on the judges to think about when the VPPA became law. It was an era where video business was popular and many people rented VHS films from video rental transactions. The congress tried to protect the privacy of consumers whose rental lists could be revealed. Although the VPPA was changed a dozen years ago to fix the online streaming of films to expand the range of the VPPA to live sports and to emphasize videos, the NBA and the NFL are too far away.

If the judges of the NBA petition grant, the NFL should be credited with support.