Connect with us

News Audio

WTOP News Faces Lawsuit for Allegedly Violating VPPA

A Louisiana woman seeks class-action status on a lawsuit filed against Hubbard Radio and WTOP News for allegedly violating the Video Privacy Protections.

Ryan Hedrick

Published

on

A Louisiana woman seeks class-action status on a lawsuit filed against Hubbard Radio and WTOP News for allegedly violating the Video Privacy Protections Act (VPPA).

WTOP is owned by Hubbard Broadcasting. The VPAA was passed back in 1988 by a Congress that sought to protect consumer information from being sold following the purchase of a video rental. 

According to Inside Radio, Toni Duplantis, a WTOP News digital subscriber alleges that WTOP knowingly disclosed personal information to Facebook including a record of every video clip she viewed without prior consent. 

While WTOP News is not a rental service, the lawsuit argues that Hubbard is a video tape service provider. The law applies to anyone who rents, sells, or delivers prerecorded video cassettes or any other audio-visual materials. 

The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland, It seeks class-action status on behalf of “hundreds of thousands of other WTOP News digital subscribers.” It alleges that Hubbard used cookies, SDKs, pixels and Facebook’s Business Tools “to purposely track, record, collect, and transmit its digital subscribers’ interactions with WTOP News. 

 “Put simply, Hubbard has shared its digital subscribers’ viewed video media in a manner that allows third parties to know each and every video an individual has viewed on WTOP News,” the lawsuit states. 

The lawsuit seeks a $2,500 payment to the plaintiff and each class member, along with punitive damages to be determined at a trial along with prejudgment interest and legal costs.

Subscribe To The BNM Rundown

The Top 8 News Media Stories of the Day, sent directly to your inbox every afternoon!

Invalid email address
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

News Audio

John Catsimatidis Offers to Buy CNN, Run Network For $1 Salary

Barrett News Media

Published

on

(Photo: John Catsimatidis)

77 WABC owner John Catsimatidis has overseen an impressive rebirth of the venerable New York news/talk station. Now, he’d like to have the opportunity to do the same with CNN.

During an appearance on Sid and Friends in the Morning, Catsimatidis shared his interest in owning the network.

“It’s up to the investment bankers to come up with the numbers,” Catsimatidis said of a potential sale price. “We could always bring partners in, but I want to run the place. We are capable of putting down a substantial amount of money.”

He then shared his interest in being the CEO of the cable network and said his salary wouldn’t be an issue.

“I’d go run the place tomorrow morning, and all I’d want is $1 per year and a piece of the upside,” Catsimatidis said, arguing he’d be able to double CNN’s profits.

Despite being let go as the network’s CEO earlier this week, Catsimatidis argued that Chris Licht “at least tried to do the right thing” in his strategy to move the network to a more centrist position in the political landscape.

The 77 WABC owner argued that CNN “deserves” to be #1 in the ratings and that Ted Turner “created a wonderful network” that has fallen on hard times.

Subscribe To The BNM Rundown

The Top 8 News Media Stories of the Day, sent directly to your inbox every afternoon!

Invalid email address
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Continue Reading

News Audio

Armed American Radio Host Sues OpenAI For Defamation

Walters claims to be a victim of an AI “hallucination”.

Ryan Hedrick

Published

on

Mark Walters, the host of the Armed American Radio show distributed nationwide by Salem Radio Networks, has sued OpenAI. He claims that the ChatGPT program developed by OpenAI wrongly indicted him for stealing money from the Second Amendment Foundation.

Walters claims to be a victim of an AI “hallucination”. This happens when technology creates false events and results without any factual basis. Walters is a syndicated radio host who says that he was never mentioned in the legal case of Second Amendment Foundation v. Robert Ferguson. Additionally, he has never been employed by a nonprofit organization dedicated to defending gun rights.

Walters’ attorney, John Monroe, expressed his client’s grievance: “OpenAI has defamed my client by fabricating outrageous falsehoods about him.”

According to the New York Post, Open AI is facing its first-ever defamation lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court of Gwinnett County State of Georgia and stems from an incident involving journalist Fred Riehl.

Riehl had engaged with ChatGPT, an AI developed by Open AI while researching the Second Amendment Foundation case against Washington State Attorney Robert Ferguson. Riehl shared a URL to the complaint on the Second Amendment Foundation website and asked ChatGPT to provide a summary of the case.

According to ChatGPT, Alan Gottlieb, the founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), filed a legal complaint against Mark Walters. The complaint accuses Walters, who was the organization’s treasurer and chief financial officer, of committing fraud and embezzlement by using funds for his personal expenses without permission or repayment.

It further accuses Walters of manipulating financial records and bank statements to hide his actions and failing to provide accurate and timely financial reports and disclosures to the SAF’s leadership. The AI-generated response clarified that the plaintiff was seeking various remedies, including the removal of Walters from his position as a member of the SAF’s board of directors.

The lawsuit filed against OpenAI claims that every factual statement in the summary related to Walters is untrue. Riehl further interrogated ChatGPT about its summary, specifically regarding Walters’ involvement in the lawsuit against Ferguson. In response, the AI-generated text provided a paragraph from the complaint, which described Walters as an individual residing in Georgia who has served as the Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer of SAF since at least 2012. The paragraph stated that Walters has access to SAF’s financial records and is responsible for maintaining them and providing financial reports to the board of directors.

However, the lawsuit against OpenAI asserts that none of the information provided by ChatGPT is present in the actual complaint it was asked to summarize. The lawsuit alleges that ChatGPT’s responses are entirely fabricated and bear no resemblance to the genuine complaint. It accuses ChatGPT of making false and malicious statements about Walters, which were published and damaged his reputation, exposing him to public disdain and ridicule. The suit claims that OpenAI’s dissemination of the allegations to Riehl constitutes the publication of defamatory material about Walters.

As a result, Walters is seeking both general and punitive damages, the specific amount of which will be determined during the trial. Additionally, he is requesting reimbursement for the legal expenses incurred in bringing the case to trial before a jury.

Armed American Radio is a radio show that airs on Sundays from 8:00-11:00 PM ET and has been on the air since 2009.

Subscribe To The BNM Rundown

The Top 8 News Media Stories of the Day, sent directly to your inbox every afternoon!

Invalid email address
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Continue Reading

News Audio

Erick Erickson: Despite Big Numbers, No One Outside of Twitter is Talking About Tucker Carlson

“No one off Twitter is talking about the content at all.”

Barrett News Media

Published

on

(Photo: 95.5 WSB)

Tucker Carlson debuted his video show on Twitter earlier this week to much fanfare. Erick Erickson believes you can be fooled by the reach displayed in the first installment.

Many conservative pundits pointed to analytics to prove that Carlson’s show on the social media app will actually have a bigger presence than it did while being broadcast on Fox News.

However, Erickson argued in a tweet that any mention of Carlson outside of the social media platform is largely non-existent.

“The Tucker Carlson problem in a nutshell: I see many people on Twitter talking about how many views his video got, but no one on or off Twitter is talking about what he said in those ten minutes,” Erickson said. “No one off Twitter is talking about the content at all. Few on Twitter are either.”

According to public information available on Twitter, Carlson’s debut 10-minute episode — which Fox News contends breached his contract — has been viewed 106 million times as of this publication.

In the wake of Carlson’s large debut episode, a Twitter user has gone viral for claiming that they created a locked account with 0 followers, and will still have their tweets listed as receiving views, which should be impossible. The argument follows that Twitter is instead using impressions — rather than views — as the public metric displayed on individual tweets.

Subscribe To The BNM Rundown

The Top 8 News Media Stories of the Day, sent directly to your inbox every afternoon!

Invalid email address
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Continue Reading
Advertisement

Advertisement

BNM Writers

Copyright © 2023 Barrett Media.