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Adobe Spies On Users' eBook Libraries
New submitter stasike writes: Nate at the-digital-reader.com reports that Adobe is spying on any computer that runs Digital Editions 4, the newest version of Adobe's Epub app. They are collecting data about what users are reading, and they're also searching users' computers for e-book files and sending that information too. That includes books not indexed in DE4. All of the data is sent in clear text. This is just another example of DRM going south.
The outrage needs to be swift and directly entirely at the fact that they are collecting this information in the first place not whether it is transmitted in plain text or encrypted.
It's yet another example of how pirates provide better service to their customers than the legitimate retailers.
Yet another reason why I don't like Adobe or their products.
They suck at security, and they don't give a rat's ass about your privacy.
Fuck you Adobe. Fuck you.
I played a DVD the other day, something I haven't done in a few years. It took damn near forever to get the actual movie playing. It was ad after ad for movies from ten years ago. Pirated movies are great. You hit play and the movie starts. That's it.
That's spyware.
Anyone who has an ebook reader with Wi-Fi is asking for trouble.
It will be a sad day for me when my Sony PRS-300 reader fails to start. This reader has no Wi-Fi.
What is that I hear you say? Turn off the Wi-Fi on the reader? Please, how naive do you think I am?
"The only controls available to those on board were two push-buttons on the center post of the cabin -- one labeled on and one labeled off. The on button simply started a flight from Mars. The off button connected to nothing. It was installed at the insistence of the Martian mental-health experts, who said that human beings were always happier with machinery they thought they could turn off."
- Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
It was ad after ad for movies from ten years ago.
The worst are the ads telling you not to pirate movies. Since you're seeing the ad, I think it'd be safe to assume you didn't pirate it. Because if you did pirate the movie, you certainly wouldn't be seeing that useless crap.
The stupidity just boggles the mind sometimes.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Yeah; I think everyone needs a copy of "'Alice In Wonderlands) ; DROP TABLE Books ; --.epub" as mentioned by geantvert earlier in this thread. There's a few other titles that are equally entertaining that are must-reads.
Congratulations to Adobe, as I would congratulate a fellow human being (since the supreme court ruling that corporations are people), for truly living the hardcore capitalist version of the American Dream. Doing whatever you can legally or illegally get away with to make more money, and not giving a [your favourite naughty word for excrement goes here] about anyone you walk over in the process.
It is the spyware part which bothers me the most. It is like having a plummer come to fix your toilet, you step out of the house for a few minutes, only to find when you come back that he is going through all your stuff - in order perhaps to understand you better as a person so that he can service you better in the future - or figure out if you are rich so he can charge you more. Or perhaps sell a list of your inventory to someone, for whatever purpose which is no longer the plummer's concern once he gets payment.
I should probably be upset about this whole Adobe thing, but after watching John Oliver's Last Week Tonight show from yesterday about how the police in the US can cease assets and bring cases against physical objects such as money or houses on a guilty until proven innocent basis, and proudly spend the money on whatever they want including machines for making frozen margueritas in the office - I just give up. How can you expect companies to do the right thing when the whole system is rotten to the core.