Your Favourite e-Book is Reading You: Privacy, User Rights and the Long Arm of the Amazon
Are you up to scratch with the new book reading technology? Have you got a Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite or a Kindle Fire? Are you looking to buy one?
Before you do, there is something you should know. Two things in fact.
1. Your e-reader is watching you.
Let me start by quoting the following data from an article in the Wall Street Journal:
“It takes the average reader just seven hours to read the final book in Suzanne Collins’s “Hunger Games” trilogy on the Kobo e-reader—about 57 pages an hour. Nearly 18,000 Kindle readers have highlighted the same line from the second book in the series: “Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them.” And on Barnes & Noble’s Nook, the first thing that most readers do upon finishing the first “Hunger Games” book is to download the next one.”
How does this sound to you? A bit too specific? How is it possible that such specific information is collected about the readers’ behaviour? The answer is simple: your e-reader is … reading you.
Now, let’s face it. We live in the world of the Social Network where whenever you go online you are being watched … to some extent. Ironically enough this is all to do with the small sweet round cake. No, not this one. The other one.
And it’s not only Amazon Kindle that is doing that – most e-reading devices record not only what you read, but how fast you read and where in a book you get bogged down – and they pass that information back to publishers.
You really wished you could read a book without people staring at the back cover on the train? Yes, by all means, you could do that. The only people who will be able to see what you’ve been reading lately will be the people at Amazon. And maybe the book publishers.
Well, if that all sounds a bit too intruding into your personal life, you can breathe, because it’s not all that bad. You will only be part of statistics. Noone is actually keeping a personal record of you. At least I hope not!
Now what about privacy, you ask? Yes, I ask myself that very question every time a website now asks me whether I want them to place a cookie onto my device. To be honest, a lot of us are quite happy to give part of our privacy away when it comes to convenience online. Even if we don’t want to admit it, it is true. It’s all about tailoring the Web for your Personal needs. And why does Kindle need the data of how well a book is received? Well, in the old days, people used to write reviews about the books. Initially in newspapers, later on online. Today, it is all done a bit more subtle. Over your shoulder.
Although it’s all in Amazon Kindle’s Terms and Conditions:
“Information Received. The Software will provide Amazon with data about your Kindle and its interaction with the Service (such as available memory, up-time, log files, and signal strength). The Software will also provide Amazon with information related to the Digital Content on your Kindle and Supported Devices and your use of it (such as last page read and content archiving). Information provided to Amazon, including annotations, bookmarks, notes, highlights, or similar markings you make using your Kindle or Reading Application, may be stored on servers that are located outside the country in which you live.”
Translated, that means just what I said above. Your favourite e-reader is reading you. Accept that. Or be old-fashioned like me, go to the book store and stick with your old friend, the Book.
Moving on…
2. The e-book you’ve just paid for and downloaded is not actually all yours
Imagine the following. You go to Waterstones and decide to buy Fifty Shades of Grey. Everyone’s been telling you about it and you decide to see what the fuss is all about. You place it on your bookshelf and go to bed. You wake up in the morning and… surprise – the book is no longer there. It has been replaced with a cheque and a note of apology.
Someone just entered into your house whilst you were sleeping, and took the book away. Now, you don’t need to be a lawyer to figure that there will be some issues with something like that, not least in the world of consumer law but also with some engagement of criminal issues.
You’re right.
Something to that effect did however happen in 2009 to the purchasers of the Kindle edition of the Animal Farm by George Orwell. Affected customers received the following email:
“The Kindle edition books Animal Farm by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) & Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) were removed from the Kindle store and are no longer available for purchase. When this occured, your purchases were automatically refunded. You can still locate the books in the Kindle store, but each has a status of not yet available. Although a rarity, publishers can decide to pull their content from the Kindle store.”
What happened there? Apparently, a publisher that supplied Amazon with George Orwell titles decided that it didn’t want to sell them via Amazon anymore. So away they went.
But how is it possible to have the book taken away from you. You did pay for it and purchase it didn’t you? Well, wrong.
Under Kindle’s terms and conditions, you are not buying an e-book, you are simply given a limited license to download and read it. It goes like this:
“Kindle Content is licensed, not sold, to you by the Content Provider”
and further
“Unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content.”
“Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use.”
Translated, this means that you are forbidden to lend or sell the book you’ve just “bought”. Simply because you didn’t buy it.
And don’t say you haven’t been warned! Happy reading!
One last thing…
The most recent trend in e-reading comes to the advantage of … teachers. A recent announcement has been published, to my astonishment, that CourseSmart, which sells digital versions of textbooks by big publishers, has come up with an Analytics tool which will collect data of students’ reading behaviours. It will then report back to instructors on whether students are doing the assigned reading. Creepy! I’m glad this whole snooping and data mining fashion of today wasn’t trendy back when I was in college!
This post first appeared in http://valsopinion.wordpress.com/2012/11/26/your-favourite-e-book-is-reading-you-privacy-user-rights-and-the-long-arm-of-the-amazon/
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Written by Valya Georgieva
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