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Amazon Is Collecting Your Kindle Highlights & Notes
TechDirt catches Amazon playing fast and loose with data that consumers may think is private — namely, their highlights and notes entered into Kindle books. "Amazon will now remotely upload and store the user notes and highlights you take on your Kindle, which it then compiles into 'popular highlights.' I have no doubt that the feature provides some interesting data, but it's not clear that users realize their highlighting and notes are being stored and used that way. Amazon basically says there's no big privacy deal here, because the data is always aggregated. But it sounds like many users don't realize this is happening at all. Amazon says people can find out they added this feature by reading 'forum posts and help pages.' ... [This situation] once again highlights a key concern in that the 'features' of your 'book' can change over time. Your highlighting may have been yours in the past, but suddenly it becomes Amazon's with little notice."
1.) highlight
2.) upload in steal, er, I meant borrow...ahhhrr.. I mean stealth mode
3.) profit
4.) wow sharewholders
This is why I'm so very insistent about owning the hardware I buy. Mostly. Unfortunately, I sort of share vague ownership of a PS3 with Sony. :-( But generally, it's not a concession I'm willing to make.
Sadly, I don't think most people are aware of the choice they're making. And when you tell them, they think you're a raving lunatic or some kind of bizarre idealist. But their choices have real consequences, and the network effect of their choices have consequences for me.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Even collecting information about 'most popular passages' is, IMHO, kind of invasive. Especially when it happens without you even realizing it. When you highlight something on a personal device you hold in your lap where you 'buy' the books the expectation is not that the highlight becomes public knowledge in any way, even as part of an aggregate.
The plain fact is, the idea that you 'own' your Kindle or any of the books on it is a complete fiction. Amazon should not be allowed to imply that you do in any way.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
This is why I still don't own a "reader". I'm willing to go as far as PDF readers, i.e. some tablet device. But if I can't get it as a PDF, fine, I'll buy the paper product.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Why should I care that Amazon builds an aggregate summary?
What if your (admittedly stupid) note said "This passage is exactly what happened to my wife, Jenny Smith, last night at our home address of 12345 Stupid street in Stupidville."? Or more likely, you annotated someone's name and address or phone number in your kindle because you had it with you by the pool, but you didn't have your phone.
Why should I care that Amazon builds an aggregate summary?
You might care if the books you read and the things you highlight come up at your next security clearance interview. As well, it may take you some time to realize why you are getting certain types of clearly targeted spam. And, down the road, maybe you just don't fit in to that condo you want to buy, maybe you'll wonder why and where they got their data. Trying to adopt a child? You might want to be concerned
You do realize that all data is for sale, right?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Isn't it interesting that the very companies that protest constantly about piracy of their "intellectual property" and want to DRM lock everything to prevent it seem to have no respect for the property rights of individuals? Take note, you apologists who constantly point out that piracy is "theft" because it "steals" something that belongs to the creator whose 'right' to compensation and control of their works must be protected. Why silent now? The personal notes a person creates on their reading device are no different from other creative works and should be protected accordingly. Amazon should not be accessing or using this information without express permission or fairly compensating the rights holders and providing royalties for the lives of the authors plus 70 years. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Isn't the user generated notes are written by the customers? The customers still owns the copyrights and they can and should all file DMCA take down notices.
In theory, you are probably correct. However, you can be relatively sure that somewhere in the terms of use, Yahoo's lawyers have tried to reduce liability, and you may have agreed to assign your copyright on your annotations to Yahoo (or otherwise limited your ability to use the DMCA or sue for infringement).
Not to mention you would be suing a large corporation with many more $s than you. Not easy.
One more thing to file under Yet Another Reason I Will Never Use A Kindle.
Nobody gives a shit.
Since this is a new "feature", I'm sure it was no where at the time buyers acquired the product a few months ago. Besides, that's not the whole point. Sure, Amazons profits from this and they do give part of the benefit back to users, but it should be done in such a way that the users are absolutely informed of what's happening. And it should be disabled by default.
It's not the fact that I can opt in or out.
It is the fact that, once I buy a (e)-book, I don't want to hear from or interact with the publisher ever again concerning that purchase. Money exchanged, goods recieved, and that's the end of it. Period and finished.
I do not want my "book" to send out any information whatsoever unless I explicitly go through motions that enables it. And if I do enable it, I expect a little wi-fi type of icon present on the corner of every page of each book that has this enabled.
On the same vein, I do not want my "book" to listen for and receive anything. No "your purchase has been deleted your money refunded" bullshit. Once I have it, I have it, it is mine, and nothing short of a physical person showing up with a signed court order will remove it from my possession.
I do not want a device that interacts in any way whatsoever with a network other than to make a new purchase, and then limited exclusively to information concerning that purchase.
Capish? What is so hard to understand about implementing this simple basic model, and nothing more?
WRT Kindle. This device was crucified on /. from the beginning and now Geeks assume that it eats little Geek children automatically with no opt-out.
Kindle:
1. Can be loaded with any books you want in the supported formats, including free books and homemade books.
2. Using Calibre (free software), you can convert just about anything to a Kindle-compatible format.
3. You can just plug the damned thing into your USB port, even in Linux, to transfer files. It acts as a FAT32 USB filesystem. MUCH more user-friendly than the very proprietary Sony readers.
4. You can switch wireless off and never, ever use if it you dislike the thought of connectivity.
5. There ARE VERY USEFUL features of connectivity, though. For example, in addition to a Kindle, I have the Kindle apps for iPhone and PC. Because all are connected, they all have the same books on them, and they all synchronize notes, bookmarks, and "current page" automatically. I can go from device to device to device transparently. Of course, this only works for books bought through Amazon, but that ought to make the privacy advocates happy.
6. All Amazon formats have been hacked, so if it makes you more comfortable, you can buy books on Amazon, decrypt and resave them under a new name, and then even if someday somehow Amazon decides to delete books from Kindles, it won't get yours.
7. The feature being talked about in this /. story is opt-in and documented, which is the correct policy that most /. users say they want.
Honestly, it's like Apple stories on /. You could have a story that says "Amazon.com gives billions to charity" or "Apple invests billions in rainforest preservation" and people would scream "MY GOD STOP THEIR TOTAL PLAN FOR EVIL WORLD DOMINATION NOW THEY ARE STEALING YOUR SOUL AND YOU WILL BE SORRY!"
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
That's already far, far too much. Beyond the beyonds in fact. However I'm sure it seems utterly innocuous to the kind of people already engaged in wholesale data collection. If ever there was an example of entry level drugs leading on to harder and harder types, data is it. They started with name and address, moved on to purchase history, then browsing history, and now they're on what parts of the book you highlight. Pretty soon they'll want to know the times you read(If they don't already) and where you're reading things. Corporations are serious data junkies and they are jonseing bad.
Optional, but on by default. Why am I not surprised? This is the same logic used by spammers, telemarketing scammers, credit card fraudsters, and (waxing rhetorical) rapists. "They didn't say 'No', so what I'm doing is OK." People don't want this data shared; doing it under their noses and giving them a hidden switch does not make it OK.
As far as I'm concerned, if you people aren't already involved in a criminal enterprise, you soon will be. Even if these practices don't become illegal, you'll eventually trespass to the point where they become so.
May the Maths Be with you!
I can't wait to see who comes out of the woodwork to defend Amazon on this one, and what sort of faux reasoning they use to do it.
Well I will for one, because I don't see where Amazon have done anything wrong. Point out to me where the "faux reasoning is".
Here are the facts of this:
- The data is anonymized
- The data is only published in aggregate
- The change was publicised in the Kindle forums, by email and in a new manual being sent out
- The change only sends highlights, not annotations. (The Techdirt writer seems to have misunderstood the article they cited and invented the annotations part)
- The setting defaults to off.
So Amazon have offered to collect anonymized data, with the user's express permission, which would then only be published in aggregate. And to make sure the users understand what this means they are sending out an updated manual with an explanation.
This is exactly what they should have done. They want to introduce a cool new feature and they're doing it in a way that doesn't hurt anyone. This is the behaviour that we want from retailers. Unfortunately, the fact that they did everything right doesn't really matter because there are so many people - the writers of the Techdirt article, the submitter, the Slashdot editors and you - who are so keen to rant about big business violating their right to privacy that they don't even stop to check what's actually going on. If you'd clicked through the actual articles first you would know that there's nothing to be worried about.
Most importantly, hardware that you own doesn't "phone home" unless you specifically configure it to do so.
They have made this configuration radically simple to carry out. Just turn the wireless off, leave it off, and use your USB port to transfer your data.
And for the tinfoil hatters who say "How do you know it's really off? How do you know the switch is actually connected to anything?" and so on... Well, how do you know there's no microphone, GSM transmitter, and SIM card buried in your kitchen stove secretly sending all of your conversations to Whirlpool?
I have a question for you. As in, I really don't know the answer but would like to become informed.
Let's say that a user disables the wireless functionality so that only the USB port can perform data transfers on the Kindle, as you mention. That user then purchases the book 1984. The publisher screws up and decides that the very best way to handle that is to forcibly reverse the sales. In other words, instead of taking responsibility for its screw-up and paying any necessary fees to the copyright holder to make those sales legit, it instead decides to make this the customers' problem. Would the settings you mention have been able to prevent the forced reversal of that sale? Why or why not?
If it would not, then what you mention is academic at best, "feel-good yet useless" at worst since it still doesn't represent actual control over a device you purchased. Control that can be withdrawn or overridden at any time is not real ownership.
If it would, then it's a good thing that the users have at least some influence over whether or not a corporation can manipulate their device after the sale has been made. It's not nearly enough to convince me to purchase a Kindle, as I enjoy doing business with companies that don't even want to do such things for any reason. That is to say, there is still a willingness there to do something that I believe is wrong and is in fact an adversarial way of relating to customers (remember The Outer Limits? "We control the horizontal, and the vertical..."). At that point, in my eyes, we're talking now about degree; not a matter of whether it's good or bad, but about how bad it actually is.
Also, since you had to throw that in there: you can make this about wearing a tinfoil hat because let's face it, portraying those who disagree with you as paranoid lunatics is a classic, time-tested way of discrediting them without having to actually answer their objections. It works well on people who are intimidated by how it might make them look ("oh no, he might think I'm unreasonable!") because they don't recognize that technique for the weakness that it is. I'll additionally explain in more practical terms why this technique is not valid in this instance.
I said, and you quoted, "Most importantly, hardware that you own doesn't 'phone home' unless you specifically configure it to do so." Not phoning home unless you set it up to do so is known as "opt-in". What you describe as enabled by default unless you disable it is known as "opt-out". From the perspective of the savvy customer, there is a world of difference in the desirability of those two methods. Opt-in is superior by far for anyone other than pushy corporations and spammers. No paranoia is needed to recognize that fact, but nice try.
Then there's the little issue of how you make that configuration sound: either disable all wireless capabilities or put up with phoning home and remote control without consent. Real choice would mean being able to use wireless capabilities "client-pull" style while still disabling the phoning-home and unwanted remote control. Assuming you have portrayed that accurately, this is still not desirable.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein