Lawsuit Accusing YouTube Of Tracking Children Is Back On

A case accusing Google, YouTube, DreamWorks, and a few toy manufacturers of monitoring the YouTube activities of children under 13 has been resurrected by an appeals court. According to a decision issued on Wednesday, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act does not exclude legal actions based on specific state privacy statutes. COPPA, which was enacted in 1998 and revised in 2012, mandates that websites acquire parental approval before collecting and disclosing personally identifiable information of children under the age of 13. The FTC and state attorneys general have the authority to look into and sanction people who break the law thanks to COPPA. There are COPPA-like laws in place in a number of US states. The resurrected complaint claims that Hasbro, DreamWorks, Mattel, and the Cartoon Network illegally attracted kids to their YouTube channels in order to advertise to them. It bases its claim on statutes in California, Colorado, Indiana, and Massachusetts. [caption id="attachment_74627" align="alignright" width="1200"] YouTube[/caption] The initial complaint was dismissed by a federal judge in San Francisco who ruled that COPPA prohibits customers from suing businesses for privacy concerns. The judges of the Ninth Circuit who heard the appeal disagreed with the district court's reasoning in a unanimous ruling. The decision states that COPPA is not the only method for enforcement. Judge Margaret McKeown stated that it would be absurd to infer that Congress intended to concurrently restrict all state remedies for violations of those laws because the bar on "inconsistent" state legislation implicitly preserves "consistent" state substantive laws. It's not the first time that YouTube has run into legal issues because of how it manages young users' data. The FTC and the New York state attorney general levied a $170 million fine against the Alphabet subsidiary in 2019 for COPPA violations. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1280"] Photo Credit: BBC[/caption] The matter will now return to district court and ask for damages over a seven-year period beginning in 2013.