A US appeals court on Wednesday revived a lawsuit accusing Alphabet's Google and several other companies of violating the privacy of children under age 13 by tracking their YouTube activity without parental consent, in order to send them targeted advertising.
The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Seattle said Congress
did not intend to pre-empt state law-based privacy claims by adopting the federal
Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA.
That law gives the Federal Trade Commission and state
attorneys general, but not private plaintiffs, the authority to regulate the
online collection of personal data about children under age 13.
The lawsuit alleged that Google's data collection violated
similar state laws, and that YouTube content providers such as Hasbro, Mattel,
the Cartoon Network, and DreamWorks Animation lured children to their channels,
knowing that they would be tracked.
In July 2021, US District Judge Beth Labson Freeman in San
Francisco dismissed the lawsuit, saying the federal privacy law pre-empted the
plaintiffs' claims under California, Colorado, Indiana, Massachusetts, New
Jersey, and Tennessee law.
But in Wednesday's 3-0 decision, Circuit Judge Margaret
McKeown said the federal law's wording made it "nonsensical" to
assume Congress intended to bar the plaintiffs from invoking state laws
targeting the same alleged misconduct.
The case was returned to Freeman to consider other grounds
that Google and the content providers might have to dismiss it.
Lawyers for Google and the content providers did not
immediately respond to requests for comment. The children's lawyers did not
immediately respond to similar requests.
In October 2019, Google agreed to pay $170 million to settle
charges by the FTC and New York Attorney General Letitia James that YouTube
illegally collected children's personal data without parental consent.
The plaintiffs in the San Francisco case said Google did not
begin complying with COPPA until January 2020.
Their lawsuit sought damages for YouTube users aged 16 and
younger from July 2013 to April 2020.
The case is Jones et al v. Google LLC et al, 9th US Circuit
Court of Appeals, No. 21-16281. © Reuters
0 comments:
Post a Comment