Bork tapes

Photograph of a bearded man
Robert Bork at the White House on October 9, 1987, shortly after the Washington City Paper published "The Bork Tapes"

The Bork tapes were a series of 146 videotapes rented out by Robert Bork, then a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, from Potomac Video in Washington, D.C.[1] He had been nominated to the Supreme Court of the United States by President Ronald Reagan on July 1, 1987. His contentious confirmation hearings made him a subject of intense media scrutiny, based especially on his views concerning privacy in the Constitution.[2][3] Michael Dolan, a writer at the Washington City Paper who frequented the same video rental store, discovered Bork's visits and asked for a record of his rental history, which the assistant manager granted in the form of a Xerox copy.

On September 25, the City Paper published Dolan's survey of Bork's rentals in a cover story titled "The Bork Tapes".[4] The revealed tapes proved to be modest, innocuous, and non-salacious, consisting of a garden-variety of films such as thrillers, British drama, and those by Alfred Hitchcock.[5][6][7] The subsequent leakage and coverage of the tapes resulted in Congress passing the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), which forbids the sharing of video tape rental information, amidst a bipartisan consensus on intellectual privacy.[8][9][10] Proponents of the VPPA, including Senator Patrick Leahy, contended that the leakage of Bork's tapes was an outrage.[11][12] The bill was passed in just over a year after the incident.[13][14]

  1. ^ "Bork Tapes 1". October 9, 2007. Archived from the original on October 9, 2007. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
  2. ^ Peterson, Andrea (December 6, 2021). "How Washington's last remaining video rental store changed the course of privacy law". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
  3. ^ Advokat, Stephen (November 20, 1987). "Publication Of Bork's Video Rentals Raises Privacy Issue". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
  4. ^ Dolan 1987, pp. 1, 12, 14, 16, 18 (cited in Preer 2008, p. 200).
  5. ^ Harvard Law Review 2018, p. 1766.
  6. ^ King, Lila (December 20, 2012). "From Robert Bork to Instagram in 7 steps". CNN Business. CNN. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
  7. ^ Duprey, Rich (December 21, 2012). "Netflix Wants to Tell Everyone What's on Your TV Tonight". autos.yahoo.com. Retrieved September 6, 2023.
  8. ^ Cohn, Jonathan (July 21, 2019). "Online viewer privacy is regulated by an act originally designed to protect video rentals". The Conversation. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
  9. ^ Harvard Law Review 2018, p. 1767.
  10. ^ Peterson, Andrea (December 6, 2021). "How a failed Supreme Court bid is still causing headaches for Hulu and Netflix". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
  11. ^ Archives, L. A. Times (May 11, 1988). "Senators Seek 'Bork Bill' on Privacy". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
  12. ^ "Virginia man sues Chick-fil-A in SF court over sharing data with Facebook - CBS San Francisco". CBS News. January 24, 2023. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
  13. ^ "Social sharing and the US Video Privacy Protection Act: Perilous for online video content providers". White & Case. June 25, 2018. Retrieved September 5, 2023.
  14. ^ Xavier, Jon (December 19, 2012). "The "Bork Law": How a 25-year-old political gesture has become a Netflix stumbling block". Silicon Valley Business Journal. Retrieved September 5, 2023.