Each year, upwards of 100,000 music fans pay up to $599 for the ticket price of weekend-long admission to the Coachella Music and Arts festival outside of Palm Springs, California. In 2025, however, nearly 60% of Coachella’s general admission ticket buyers turned to an increasingly ubiquitous short-term loan service to finance the steep cost of admission: Buy Now, Pay Later (“BNPL”). BNPL financial services typically allow consumers to split purchases into four or fewer interest-free installments, often without a traditional credit check. The organizers of Coachella, for example, partnered with a ticketing provider AXS to provide BNPL options allowing festival attendees to purchase tickets for as little as $49.99 up front with the remaining costs due in installments over the next several months.
data privacy
The Return of the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA)
By Amy Gordon on
This year has seen a tremendous spike in the number of cases alleging violations of the Video Privacy Protection Act (“VPPA”), 18 U.S.C. § 2710, a statute enacted in 1988 in response to the Washington City Paper’s publication of a list of films that then-Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork had rented from a video store. The statute was originally intended to “allow[] consumers to maintain control over personal information divulged and generated in exchange for receiving services from video tape service providers.”
Big Tech, Biometrics and BIPA: Meta’s Recent $68.5M Class Action Settlement
By Aaron Francis on
In July, Instagram’s parent company Meta Platforms, Inc. (“Meta”) agreed to a $68.5 million class-action biometric privacy settlement in connection with the company’s alleged violation of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act, 740 ILCS 14/1, et seq. (BIPA).
Consumer Data Privacy Laws: What’s Happened and What Comes Next
By Michael Guggenheim on
Increasing oversight of tech companies, particularly in the realm of consumer privacy, has been a rare example of bipartisan agreement. Despite data privacy being a growing concern for consumers, however, there has been relatively little federal policymaking. To counteract this lack of action, some states have stepped in to fill this void—and have enacted policies that could have large impacts on how businesses operate. The rapid rate at which these laws are being enacted – eleven have been enacted– indicates states are taking an increasingly protective view of consumers’ data privacy. Businesses need to be prepared to comply with these new mandates, or risk costly enforcement measures.