Google’s Motion to Dismiss VPPA Case Is ‘Meritless,’ Say Plaintiffs

said their opposition Tuesday (docket 4:22-cv-05652) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in Oakland to Google’s motion to dismiss. Their Google accounts also still bear the dates they requested and obtained their videos and the price they paid for them, it said. Google “has no reason, related to the transaction, to keep the information,” it said. Google is “systematically violating” New York and Minnesota video privacy law by storing and maintaining its consumers’ information “for longer than 30 days, or at the very least, for longer than one year,” it said. Faced with those “clear violations,” Google’s motion to dismiss “resorts to an array of meritless arguments for dismissal,” it said. Google argues that the New York and Minnesota statutes don’t provide a private right of action for wrongful retention of personal information, “but that argument contravenes the plain text and meaning of the statutes,” it said. Google cites case law interpreting the VPPA, but “it ignores that the VPPA is structured such that the private right of action provision comes immediately after the prohibition on disclosure, but before the prohibition on wrongful retention,” it said. The New York and Minnesota statutes, in contrast, “are structured such that their private right of action provisions come at the end of the statute, after their wrongful retention provisions,” it said.