Not surprised by the article below, only curious why the corporations didn’t simply offer an “opt-in” program where users allowed access to their reading habits in exchange for discounts on books, much like supermarket “Club Cards” give discounts in exchange for tracking one’s grocery habits. As consumers first and foremost, our personal data is one of the few valuable commodities we have left to offer at the altar of the ever wise, ever benevolent Free Market.
via NPR:
Is Your E-Book Reading Up On You?
E-books are quickly going mainstream: They represent nearly one out of 10 trade books sold.
It’s easy to imagine a near future in which paper books are the exception, not the norm. But are book lovers ready to have their reading tracked?
Most e-readers, like Amazon’s Kindle, have an antenna that lets users instantly download new books. But the technology also makes it possible for the device to transmit information back to the manufacturer.
“They know how fast you read because you have to click to turn the page,” says Cindy Cohn, legal director at the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation. “It knows if you skip to the end to read how it turns out.”
Akopos 