Streaming Lawsuits: Privacy, Patents, and Settlements

Streaming lawsuits in 2025 and 2026 are hitting nearly every major platform, with active cases covering user tracking, children’s privacy, addictive design, music piracy, data breaches, and patents. Netflix, Roku, Tubi, Spotify, SoundCloud, and Paramount are all defending claims in state or federal court, and one dispute now before the U.S. Supreme Court could decide whether hundreds of pending privacy cases survive at all.

Texas Is Suing Netflix Over Tracking and Autoplay

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed suit against Netflix in Collin County district court on May 11, 2026, accusing the company of violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.¹ The complaint alleges Netflix marketed itself as an ad-free alternative to surveillance-driven platforms while quietly building its own data-collection operation.²

According to the state, Netflix tracks playback events, app clicks, text input, keyword searches, and interface interactions like pausing and fast-forwarding, and shares that information with data brokers including Experian and Acxiom and with ad-tech platforms including Google Display & Video 360 and The Trade Desk.² The complaint says that collection extends to children’s profiles.¹

Texas also targets Netflix’s autoplay feature, calling it a “dark pattern” built to keep users, including kids, watching longer.³ The state is seeking an injunction against the alleged data practices, an order forcing Netflix to disable autoplay by default on children’s profiles, deletion of data collected from Texas residents, and civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation.⁴

A Netflix spokesperson called the suit meritless and “based on inaccurate and distorted information,” and said the company maintains “industry-leading, kid-friendly parental controls and transparent privacy practices.”³ The Texas complaint leans on a March 25, 2026 Los Angeles jury verdict that found Meta and Google liable for addictive product design and awarded $6 million to a young plaintiff.⁵

Michigan Is Suing Roku Over Children’s Data

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel sued Roku in the Eastern District of Michigan on April 29, 2025, alleging the platform collected personal information from children without parental consent in violation of the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and several state laws.⁶

The complaint says Roku collected voice recordings, location data, IP addresses, and browsing histories from children through tracking pixels and cookies, then let third-party channels and data brokers monetize that information. Michigan says Roku never offered children-specific profiles, so kids were treated like adult users, and that the company misled parents about its privacy protections.⁶ The state’s claims also include the federal Video Privacy Protection Act, the Michigan Preservation of Personal Privacy Act, and the Michigan Consumer Protection Act.⁷

Roku denies the allegations and says it “does not use or disclose children’s personal information for targeted advertising or any other purpose prohibited by law,” and does not partner with third-party trackers or data brokers to sell children’s data.⁷ The case remains pending.

Tubi Settled a Privacy Class Action for Nearly $20 Million

Tubi, the free ad-supported service owned by Fox, resolved a Video Privacy Protection Act class action by agreeing to pay $19,990,000. The case, Gregory v. Tubi, Inc. (No. 2024-LA-0000209), was filed in the Circuit Court for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit in Winnebago County, Illinois.⁸

The plaintiff alleged Tubi used hidden tracking software to share viewing history, geographic location, and identifying device information with third-party advertisers without permission.⁹ Tubi denied wrongdoing, and the settlement is not an admission of liability.⁸

The settlement class covers anyone who used Tubi between June 23, 2021, and August 26, 2024. The claim deadline passed on November 28, 2024, and the court held its fairness hearing on December 4, 2024.⁸ Payments began going out in October 2025, with each approved claimant receiving an equal pro rata share after administration costs, attorneys’ fees, and a service award.¹⁰ The per-person amount depends on the final claim count.¹¹

The Supreme Court Will Rule on the VPPA’s Reach

The Tubi case is one of hundreds brought under the Video Privacy Protection Act, a 1988 federal law that bars “video tape service providers” from disclosing a consumer’s personally identifiable information without consent. The statute carries a minimum of $2,500 per violation, and plaintiffs’ lawyers have used it to challenge the common industry practice of sharing viewing data through tracking pixels, cookies, and ad-tech.

Federal appeals courts have split on two basic questions: who counts as a protected “consumer,” and what data is personally identifiable. The Sixth Circuit and D.C. Circuit limit the law to people who subscribe specifically to audiovisual content; the Second and Seventh Circuits read it more broadly to cover anyone who gives personal information to a company that happens to offer video.¹² The Second Circuit also ruled in 2025 that pixel-tracking data is not personally identifiable unless an ordinary person could identify someone from it, a holding that effectively ended pixel-based VPPA claims in that circuit.¹³

On January 26, 2026, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Salazar v. Paramount Global (No. 25-459) to resolve the “consumer” question.¹⁴ The petitioner’s brief was filed on April 17, 2026, and Paramount’s response was due by June 23, 2026. The case is set for the October Term 2026, with no argument date yet scheduled.¹² The ruling will likely determine whether a large share of pending VPPA cases against streaming and media companies move forward.

Spotify and the Major Labels Won $322 Million Against Anna’s Archive

On April 14, 2026, Judge Jed S. Rakoff of the Southern District of New York entered a $322.2 million default judgment against Anna’s Archive, an anonymously operated pirate library that scraped roughly 86 million songs from Spotify and distributed them via BitTorrent.¹⁵ The suit had been filed on January 2, 2026, by Spotify together with Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music.¹⁶

Spotify was awarded $300 million, calculated at $2,500 per instance for 120,000 files where the site circumvented Spotify’s anti-piracy measures under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The labels collectively received $22.2 million, at $150,000 per each of 148 specific sound recordings identified in the scraped collection.¹⁷ The court also issued a permanent injunction directing ISPs, including Cloudflare, and domain registries to disable access to ten domains tied to the site, and ordered the operators to destroy all scraped copies.¹⁶

Anna’s Archive never responded to the lawsuit and was placed in default on February 2, 2026. Its operators defied a January 20, 2026 preliminary injunction by releasing scraped files through 47 torrents in early February.¹⁷ The site is still operating in mid-2026, moving between hosts and spinning up mirrors. ISP blocks are in place in Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Germany, but the operators remain unidentified, which makes collection of the judgment and criminal prosecution unlikely in the near term.¹⁵

SoundCloud Users Are Suing Over a 29.8 Million-Account Breach

SoundCloud faces a consolidated class action in the Southern District of New York over a December 2025 data breach that exposed information from about 29.8 million user and employee accounts. The suit, which attributes the breach to the hacker group ShinyHunters, says the exposed data included email addresses, usernames, display names, profile metadata, and in some cases geographic locations and login details.¹⁸ SoundCloud says only information already publicly visible on about 20 percent of accounts was involved and that no passwords, payment cards, or financial data were accessed.¹⁹

The lead case, Merkel v. SoundCloud Inc. (1:26-cv-00980), was filed on February 4, 2026. Two related suits followed, and on April 1, 2026, a magistrate judge consolidated all three onto the Merkel docket. Plaintiffs filed a consolidated amended complaint on May 18, 2026, and SoundCloud’s response was due by July 2, 2026.²⁰ The complaint alleges negligence and violations of the Federal Trade Commission Act, and seeks to represent all U.S. residents whose personal information was processed through SoundCloud’s systems between July and December 2025.¹⁹

Netflix’s Patent Fight With DivX Is Back in Play

A long-running patent fight between Netflix and DivX returned to the Federal Circuit in early 2026. DivX sued Netflix in 2019 for infringement of U.S. Patent No. 10,225,588, which covers systems for streaming partially encrypted media. Netflix challenged the patent at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, which twice sided with DivX and declined to invalidate it.

On February 13, 2026, the Federal Circuit reversed the Board’s reading of a key claim term, vacated the decision, and sent the case back for a new analysis of whether the patent is obvious in light of prior art.²¹ The remand will determine whether DivX can keep pressing its infringement claims against Netflix.

1
The Guardian. Texas Sues Netflix Lawsuit
2
Variety. Netflix Sued by Texas Attorney General Addictive Spying on Users
3
Politico. Netflix Sued by Texas AG for Alleged Surveillance Addictive Features
4
Texas Office of the Attorney General. Attorney General Ken Paxton Sues Netflix Spying Texas Kids and Consumers Illegally Collecting Users
5
NPR. Meta YouTube Social Media Trial Verdict
6
Michigan Department of Attorney General. AG Nessel Files Lawsuit Against Roku for Allegedly Violating Children
7
Greenberg Traurig. Michigan Attorney General Takes Action Against Roku Alleging COPPA Violations
8
Video Streaming Settlement. Gregory v. Tubi, Inc. Settlement
9
ClassAction.org. Tubi Video Streaming Settlement
10
ClaimDepot. Tubi Privacy Settlement
11
Video Streaming Settlement. Gregory v. Tubi, Inc. Settlement FAQ
12
SCOTUSblog. Salazar v. Paramount Global
13
WilmerHale. 2025 Year in Review Video Privacy Protection Act Litigation Trends
14
U.S. Supreme Court. Salazar v. Paramount Global Questions Presented
15
Billboard. Spotify Major Labels Win Music Piracy Lawsuit
16
The Verge. Spotify Anna’s Archive Music Scraping Lawsuit Judgement
17
Music Business Worldwide. Record Labels and Spotify Seek $322M Default Judgment From Pirate Group Anna’s Archive
18
ClassAction.org. SoundCloud Data Breach Lawsuit Says Details of Nearly 30M Users Exposed in Cyberattack
19
IDStrong. SoundCloud Data Breach
20
PACER Monitor. Merkel v. SoundCloud Inc.
21
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Netflix, Inc. v. DivX, LLC, No. 2024-1541