After nearly two years of intense lobbying, Netflix has won the reform it needs to integrate its services with Facebook. Ars Technica first reported that the Senate quietly passed a reform to the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) last week, giving video streaming companies the right to share your data for up to two years after asking for your permission once. (Mother Jones notes that “The Senate didn’t even hold a recorded vote: The bill was approved by unanimous consent”).
“But so many companies integrate their data with Facebook–so what?” you ask. So: this weakens what Mother Jones notes is one of the “the strongest privacy-related laws in the country” and has been for the last 24 years, ever since the VPAA was introduced in 1988. (Interestingly, the VPAA was created after failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork’s–now deceased–video rental records were obtained without his consent).
Furthermore, the reform has so far gone unchecked. To balance the VPAA reform, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) had called for updating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), a law that currently allows the government to access most of your cloud-stored personal data without a warrant. Mother Jones explains:
Leahy always supported the video privacy changes. But his version of the Netflix bill, which was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in late November, would also have updated the ECPA. Civil libertarians saw Leahy’s proposal as a trade-off—in exchange for weakening the video privacy law, Congress would strengthen protections for your personal online content, including photo albums, documents, and archived emails. Video-streaming and rental companies wouldn’t have to ask permission every time they wanted to share your data, but the feds would have to obtain a warrant to access your online correspondence—just as they must if they want to read the letters in your desk at home.
Instead, the House picked up a version of the video privacy bill that didn’t have Leahy’s “added protections,” and on Tuesday, the Senate approved it.
Prachi Gupta is an Assistant News Editor for Salon, focusing on pop culture. Follow her on Twitter at @prachigu or email her at pgupta@salon.com.
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What To Read Awards: Top 10 Books of 2012 slide show
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10. "The Guardians" by Sarah Manguso: "Though Sarah Manguso’s 'The Guardians' is specifically about losing a dear friend to suicide, she pries open her intelligent heart to describe our strange, sad modern lives. I think about the small resonating moments of Manguso’s narrative every day."-- M. Rebekah Otto, The Rumpus
9. "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter: "'Beautiful Ruins' leads my list because it's set on the coast of Italy in 1962 and Richard Burton makes an entirely convincing cameo appearance. What more could you want?"-- Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "Fresh Air"
7. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn: "When a young wife disappears on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary, her husband becomes the automatic suspect in this compulsively readable thriller, which is as rich with sardonic humor and social satire as it is unexpected plot twists." -- Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor
6. "How Should a Person Be" by Sheila Heti: "There was a reason this book was so talked about, and it’s because Heti has tapped into something great."-- Jason Diamond, Vol. 1 Brooklyn
4. TIE "NW" by Zadie Smith and "Far From the Tree" by Andrew Solomon:
"Zadie Smith’s 'NW' is going to enter the canon for the sheer audacity of the book’s project."-- Roxane Gay, New York Times"'Far From the Tree' by Andrew Solomon is, to my mind, a life-changing book, one that's capable of overturning long-standing ideas of identity, family and love."-- Laura Miller, Salon
3. "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain: "'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' says a lot about where we are today," says Marjorie Kehe of the Christian Science Monitor. "Pretty much the whole point of that novel," adds Time's Lev Grossman.
2. "Bring Up the Bodies" by Hilary Mantel: "Even more accomplished than the preceding novel in this sequence, 'Wolf Hall,' Mantel's new installment in the fictionalized life of Thomas Cromwell -- master secretary and chief fixer to Henry VIII -- is a high-wire act, a feat of novelistic derring-do." -- Laura Miller, Salon
1. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo:
"Like the most remarkable literary nonfiction, it reads with the bite of a novel and opens up a corner of the world that most of us know absolutely nothing about. It stuck with me all year." -- Eric Banks, president of the National Book Critics Circle
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