Supreme Court weighs online video privacy

Well, the videos you watch online could be telling advertisers more about you than you actually realize. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court taking up a case involving a website accused of sharing people's viewing habits with Facebook without their permission. And the justices are now considering whether a privacy law written back in the days of video rental stores still protects us today. Remember the days of Blockbuster? Attorney Mike Morse remembers those days. He joins us to break down what's at stake. You've earned your gray. Blockbuster wasn't that long ago. I remember Blockbuster very well. We all remember Blockbuster. And there was something that happened then that essentially said, look, when you find out that, you know, this person is renting these movies, you can't use that somehow to advertise. Right. 1987, a Supreme Court judge was trying to get to become Supreme Court judge. And they leaked what he watched to try to sway either side not to vote for him. So they passed a bill and they said no longer what I watch on video tapes you can't share and now 40 years later they're trying to bootstrap that to say okay you signed up for a newsletter that happened to be owned by Paramount you saw some videos they then shared this all with Facebook Facebook now starts targeting ads and they're like you're violating my privacy and they're going to try to say it's because of they're going to try to claim under the 1988 act and everybody's going crazy and the supreme court actually heard arguments today Well, you got to, you know, this whole like right to privacy when you're on a device, right, and you're visiting these other worlds, whether it be Facebook or Instagram or TikTok, whatever it is, and you're also on a browser and you're watching whatever else, the connection between the social media, what it's scraping of your habits, there's kind of a larger question about what they're actually looking for here, right? 100%. And usually we give permission. I'm sure on your phone you've been seeing, do we have permission to track you? Yeah. Right? so on this one they're saying he did not give permission to Paramount see we all sign up for newsletters i know you do you're a learner i i love newsletters but did you give permission to sell that content i think we all are smart enough to know that they're probably selling our content we all get targeted ads but this could end that this could end targeted ads unless you explicitly allow it and that's kind of the interesting thing here that i see can you sue for online tracking this decision is going to decide i think it's so interesting though because when you walk into a store with your cell phone and it's not on airplane mode and you walk by an aisle at the local store and you spend a lot of time in one aisle then you look at your Facebook page you get coupons for the thing you were looking at it's bizarre right and so but the argument about that is you signed up for this and i think it's also interesting and noteworthy what's in the fine print on anything that we sign up for these days no one reads it no one reads And that's a problem, right? Because you say accept. I do like the, you do usually say accept. And when you sign up for a newsletter, there's small print. Do you agree to everything? Yes. They are selling your content to somebody. You will get targeted ads from somebody. We all kind of know that. I think it's just, this is an interesting case because somebody's suing about it. And if the Supreme Court, and they're divided. Arguments were today, and I read about the arguments. They're divided. Nobody knows which way they're going to go. If they say you can't track online unless you explicitly consent to it, we're going to see a lot less ads. So talk about other changes that we're going to see. I mean, we're going to see perhaps, like you say, fewer ads. The things that are connecting to your viewing doesn't necessarily connect to your Facebook. What else would change? I mean, I think you're going to, you know, the targeted ads, the solicitations, you're going to see less possible news stories on it. Like if there's news, like you said, you and I could be talking about something at lunch and that afternoon you're going to be seeing a lot of those stories. So some people like the targeted ads, like serve me up what I want to see and others don't. We have a young coworker, younger coworker than me who's probably in his 30s who actually said, what's the big problem that you people have with this? Because I like it. Right. Hey, before we go, you spent some time helping 2000 kids in Detroit. I want to mention that. What is going on here? So I just came from the circus. You just came from the circus. The Detroit Universal Circus, and our law firm sent 2,000 Detroit kids and their families to this circus, and I'm going to tell you something. To be quite honest, I wasn't sure what to expect. It was a Detroit circus. It was one of the most fun nights I've had in years. I love that. Years. We were riveted. We were at the edge of our seats. We were scared. We thought people were going to die in front of, but there was Acrobat X, and there was skaters, and there was everything under the sun, and people doing twirls in the air. Acrobatic feats that you'd never imagine. And Mike Morris, the good news is, because of the firm, 2,000 kids got to marvel in that magic. A night they'll never forget. It was amazing. With pink glasses like that, how can you not smile and have a good time? It was so much fun. You should go. It's here for another week. If you can go, go. But again, thank you for the work you do to help these kids too, because they'll never forget that night. That's a really important thing. Attorney Mike Morris, Great to see you. Thanks, buddy. Thanks for joining us here tonight.