Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Seeks Personal Search History Patent
theodp writes "The USPTO has published Amazon.com's patent application for Persistently storing and serving event data, which describes a9.com's personal search history feature and lists a9.com CEO Udi Manber as an inventor. Interestingly, claim 48 describes a user interface that responds to a user's request to "delete" his search history by rendering it "undisplayable" to him, but still leaving it accessible for other uses. When filed back in 2003, Amazon asked the USPTO not to publish the application, but rescinded that request last May, presumably in anticipation of its filing for an international patent."
Interestingly, claim 48 describes a user interface that responds to a user's request to "delete" his search history by rendering it "undisplayable" to him, but still leaving it accessible for other uses.
Holy cow. I think they should change the patent claim from "Server architecture and methods for persistently storing and serving event data" to plain old "Evil".
Once all evil in the world is patented, will there be any option but to be good? -- or will companies pay to license evil.
Does this mean that Amazon now should be considered to be spyware?
There is an interesting possibility here; I don't know whether it's applicable in the US today, but certainly the position has merit under various European data protection legislation.
Under the UK's Data Protection Acts, for example, a company holding personal information about an individual can normally be required to provide all of that information to the individual for a nominal fee. Moreover, they would have certain obligations to fix incorrect information, handle the information in a reasonably secure way, etc.
The one glaring hole I've found with UK data protection legislation is that you can't forcibly remove information somebody has about you as long as the information is correct. In other words, the fact that I cancelled my order with a particular company and have no other dealings with them, and after reading about their data handling practices I don't trust them to keep my credit card number safe, does not automatically entitle me to have the card number removed from their database. We need only look at recent events reported right here on Slashdot to see what happens when an organisation with lots of personal information held under imperfect security gets compromised.
Perhaps this sort of deception, followed by a couple of spectacular failures of security and successful lawsuits by people who'd asked for the information to be deleted and later found that it wasn't, will be the catalyst for fixing data protection legislation in many places. All a company should be allowed to keep if you ask for your information to be deleted and they have no current reason to hold it is your identity and a flag that says you don't want to have your information kept on their system.
At present, you would have to jump through all kinds of hoops to demonstrate to the data protection officials that there wasn't a valid current reason to hold your data. And that's valid as in "the organisation's data protection entry mentions it", not valid as in "they actually need it to have an effective relationship with you"; just check all the blatantly unnecessary information that Transport for London has in its entry if you don't appreciate the difference. :-(
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
In fact, not having an application published can actually be less advantageous. If, for example, you don't get a patent (happens quite often despite what crazed /.'ers say), the publication is still out there and can be used as prior art against a later application. In fact, it can help to apply for a patent even if you have no hope of ever getting one since the publication of it can be used as prior art against anyone else trying to patent the same thing.
Similar to the upcoming US election results