Osheske v. Silver Cinemas Acquisition Co.
Summary
Paul Osheske filed a putative class action against Silver Cinemas Acquisition Co., doing business as Landmark Theaters, concerning disclosure of website ticket purchase information to Facebook through a pixel. The Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal for failure to state a claim, holding that selling tickets to and providing an in-theater movie experience is not a business subject to the VPPA.
Litigation Status
Procedural Posture
Appeal from the Central District of California’s dismissal of a putative class action without leave to amend; the Ninth Circuit affirmed.
Reported Holding
The Ninth Circuit held that selling tickets to and providing an in-theater movie experience is not a business subject to the VPPA and affirmed dismissal for failure to state a claim.
What the Court Decided
The panel affirmed the district court’s dismissal, concluding that the business of providing a classic in-theater movie-going experience falls outside the VPPA’s coverage.
Significance
Generally viewed as defense-favorable. Characterizations of significance describe how the matter has generally been discussed in tracked public sources; individual holdings are often narrow, procedural, or fact-specific, and this page does not state or imply broader holdings than the sources support.
What This Page Does and Does Not Say
This page reports what our tracked public sources say about this matter — including, where identified, the procedural posture (for example, a ruling on a motion to dismiss is not a final merits decision). It does not report legal conclusions beyond those sources, does not predict outcomes, and does not constitute legal advice.
Technologies at Issue
- Facebook pixel
- web beacon
Third parties named or identified in tracked sources: Facebook.
Statutes Invoked
- Video Privacy Protection Act; 18 U.S.C. § 2710
Claims Asserted
- VPPA claim concerning disclosure of movie ticket purchase information and a Facebook identification number
What This Matter May Mean for Website Operators
For operators using similar technologies, the recurring factual questions in matters like this one are whether advertising pixels transmit page URLs or hashed form data before a consent choice. Our scanner tests these behaviors empirically.
The reported outcome direction at the statutory interpretation stage reflects how tracked sources characterize the ruling; such rulings are often narrow, posture-specific, and fact-bound rather than broad statements of law.
Detection of a similar technology on a website is an informational risk indicator, not a legal conclusion, and nothing in this section is legal advice.
Related Intelligence
Sources
About This Page
Publisher: Inspection-Ready Institute, Inc. (DBA Crandall Consulting), an independent website compliance and risk consultancy. We are not a law firm and nothing on this page is legal advice.
How this content is produced: Facts are extracted from publicly available sources — court and government materials, recognized legal press, professional analysis, and industry reports — by our litigation intelligence engine, stored with full source provenance, and rendered from the database. Risk guidelines are computed by a deterministic formula, never by an AI model directly. See the full methodology.
Limitations: Counts labeled "Tracked" reflect matters identified in our source set and are not official court statistics. We report what courts decided and did not decide; we do not predict outcomes.
Corrections: If you believe anything on this page is inaccurate, contact us via the contact page and we will review the underlying sources promptly.
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