Online privacy regulated by Reagan Era law from 1988 designed to protect video rentals
By Jonathan Cohn, Assistant Professor of Digital Cultures, University of Alberta In 1988, after United States Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork’s videotape rental history was leaked to the press, Congress realised the threat that new technologies, through the clandestine buying and selling of personal data, had to the well-being of all citizens. They acted to fix the problem with the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), a law that forbids the sharing of video tape rental information to anyone. While a law focused on videotape rental information may seem esoteric and anachronistic, debates at the time of its writing show...
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