If you’re a Crunchyroll user in the United States, you are eligible for approximately $30 of payment from the company. This is because Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures Entertainment settled a class action lawsuit with Salvador Beltran and company on September 15, 2023. You have until December 12, 2023 to submit your claim. [Thanks, ANN!]
In 2022, a subscriber named Lisa Cuevas sued Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures Entertainment. She accused the companies of disclosing subscribers’ personal and private information to third parties such as Facebook. While Sony Pictures Entertainment and Crunchyroll denied the claims, they settled “to avoid the uncertainties and expenses associated with continuing the case.”
Selling user information to third-party companies on its own is not illegal. However, in Crunchyroll’s case, it is alleged that the company did not inform or ask for consent from its users before doing so. This goes against the US Video Privacy Protection Act, which decrees that companies must get user permission before disclosing their data to third parties such as Meta.
Because this was an American legal case, only those in the United States who subscribed to the service between September 8, 2020, and September 20, 2023, will get a payment. Though unrelated to the lawsuit, Crunchyroll has offered a Halloween initiative to let non-subscribers watch some anime for free in October 2023.
