Slashdot Mirror
When Your e-Books Read You
theodp writes "'Perhaps nothing will have as large an impact on advanced analytics in the coming year as the ongoing explosion of new and powerful data sources,' writes Bill Franks in Taming The Big Data Tidal Wave. And one of the hottest new sources of Big Data, reports the WSJ's Alexandra Alter in Your E-Book Is Reading You, is the estimated 40 million e-readers and 65 million tablets in use in the U.S. that are ripe for the picking by data scientists working for Amazon, Apple, Google, and Barnes & Noble. Some privacy watchdogs argue that e-book users should be protected from having their digital reading habits recorded. 'There's a societal ideal that what you read is nobody else's business,' says the EFF's Cindy Cohn."
In Capitalist America, book reads you!
I am officially gone from
Someday some genius is going to have the bright idea of being the sole content provider who does not mine users' personal data for targeted ads. And people will sign up in droves for all the pent-up demand.
...pay per read?
Don't buy books from those vendors, don't enable wifi on your reading device.
My nook touch hasn't checked in since the day it was registered ( which was required to make it work.. grrr )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I am. That way I can buy one cheap to hack and make into a normal device.
Kind of like the Kindle "special offers edition" Smacked those ad's and other crud right out of there. Yes I shed a tear nightly for all the engineers that live on the streets due to my actions.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
bought a dead tree book at Barnes and noble?: Noted.
All this stuff you point out already happens and is in your lexis Nexis report for $50.00 Yes I can see what books you have bought already.
worried about privacy? get rid of your bank accounts, ATM cars and Credit cards. Although give it time and the security cameras at the stores will identify and log you.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Rented videos? Noted..
No, not noted http://epic.org/privacy/vppa/ by law. It's why Netflix pitched a hissy that they're not allowed to auto-publish your video rental history on Facebook http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/27/technology/netflix-facebook/index.htm
Knowing which books you buy is not equivalent to knowing which books you read. You can be buying a gift, you can be making a donation to a library, you could receive a book from someone else, etc. The difference here is that the software is designed to spy on you.
Palm trees and 8
That only tells someone what you bought, not what you read, how often you read it, what parts you reread, etc. While the first part is useful, it isn't as useful as having all of it. There's a reason why Librarians fought so hard to prevent giving over your checkout history to other parts of the government several years ago.
You live in Soviet Russia.
The distinctions have begun to get pretty blurry lately.
That presumes you buy the book from someone that records your purchase, which is historically not the case. Alternatives:
1) Buy the book from someone who doesn't record specific sales details - used book dealers still generally do this.
2) Borrow/be gifted the book from a friend/stranger.
3) Borrow the book from a library. Obviously they will record what you currently have out, but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that many delete those records soon after the book has been returned, librarians can get downright militant when it comes to defending the sanctity of their service, even if their primary target is generally censorship.
4) Read the book at the library - most encourage this sort of behavior, and it leaves no record at all.
Sadly the current DRM situation means that the library is pretty much the only option for protected ebooks, and I wouldn't be surprised if many of the lending methods out there send records to the publisher.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Rented videos? Noted. Subscribed to a magazine? Noted. Visited a web site? Noted. Searched for something? Noted.
Not even scratched the surface. How about "last page read", "text highlighted", "bookmarks taken", "time spent reading"? These are all things that B&N and Amazon know about your reading habits that weren't covered in your "don't worry-be happy" list.
It's one thing to notice what book the person across the room is reading, but standing behind them and taking notes is a whole level up from there.
The more everyone decides to move to electronic devices we don't control - ebooks, iOS, most Android devices, WP7, Facebook, DVRs that report on our viewing habits, and many others - the more this reality will come to pass. Every single thing we ever with anything electronic will be tracked, logged, used to form advertizing profiles of us, and a government database mined to find da terrurusts.
We get the reality we chose to buy. Most people are choosing to live in this world by preferring those products over others without the privacy problems. Thus, it is the world we will get.
...but standing behind them and taking notes is a whole level up from there.
Which is pretty much why I rip the DRM out of any book I buy (for futureproofing) and only use my reader device offline, using Calibre to manage content.
Read it, Stick a bloody great big sticker on the front that says this is to be handed around for free and must not be sold, Give it to someone (anyone!). I encourage everyone else to do this as well.
This is fine up to a point, but it's a bit of a raw deal for the author when you're dealing with etexts of any kind. My own "code" (FWIW) is that if the author is deceased, the publisher has no moral right to insist on milking readers for the full purchase price of any book when they are under no obligation to pass royalties on to the author, so I have no qualms about using Bittorrent to obtain those texts.
"'There's a societal ideal that what you read is nobody else's business,'"... no, no there isn't.
When speaking about the act of reading, there is some expectation of privacy, at least from the government. This isn't related to businesses per se, but librarians have fought to keep library records private and as such, their policies and software try to keep records for only as long as necessary (e.g. the duration of loan). Librarians often refuse to give out information on their patrons unless there is a court order.
This same sort of ideal can be applied to businesses in the form of opt-in data mining, but U.S. society needs to make this sort of decision in the form of information privacy law.
I remember when it was a big deal just about 10 years ago when librarians fought back against the government spying on what books people read at their library.
Now only 10 years later, only a few people are upset at the privatized version which just voluntarily hands the data over to the government without any fuss. The impacts are greater and far reaching but people don't care.
Your profile might not be public, like Facebook... but leaks, 3rd parties etc. will someday be providing profiling services to insurance and HR departments. You will not know why you don't get jobs, lose jobs, pay higher insurance, lose LOANs, pay higher interest rates.... It'll take probably decades before a similar system to credit ratings is known about and starting to be regulated (we still do not regulate the credit ratings which can be unfair... not that regulation will fix it.) Your information might be "private" but that does not protect you from "trusted 3rd parties" from providing profiles to others because it is derived information that is your real threat.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Y.T.'s mom pulls up the new memo, checks the time, and starts reading it. The estimated reading time is 15.62 minutes. Later, when Marietta does her end-of-day statistical roundup, sitting in her private office at 9:00 P.M., she will see the name of each employee and next to it, the amount of time spent reading this memo, and her reaction, based on the time spent, will go something like this:
Less than 10 min.: Time for an employee conference and possible attitude counseling.
10-14 min.: Keep an eye on this employee; may be developing slipshod attitude.
14-15.61 min.: Employee is an efficient worker, may sometimes miss important details.
Exactly 15.62 min.: Smartass. Needs attitude counseling.
15.63-16 min.: Asswipe. Not to be trusted.
16-18 min.: Employee is a methodical worker, may sometimes get hung up on minor details.
More than 18 min.: Check the security videotape, see just what this employee was up to (e.g., possible unauthorized restroom break).
Y.T.'s mom decides to spend between fourteen and fifteen minutes reading the memo. It's better for younger workers to spend too long, to show that they're careful, not cocky. It's better for older workers to go a little fast, to show good management potential. She's pushing forty. She scans through the memo, hitting the Page Down button at reasonably regular intervals, occasionally paging back up to pretend to reread some earlier section. The computer is going to notice all this. It approves of rereading. It's a small thing, but over a decade or so this stuff really shows up on your work-habits summary.