Intellectual Property Law

An E-Book Buyer's Guide to Privacy

By Ed Bayley

As we count down to end of 2009, the emerging star of this year's holiday shopping season is shaping up to be the electronic book reader (or e-reader). From Amazon's Kindle to Barnes and Noble's forthcoming Nook, e-readers are starting to transform how we buy and read books in the same way mp3s changed how we buy and listen to music.

Unfortunately, e-reader technology also presents significant new threats to reader privacy. E-readers possess the ability to report back substantial information about their users' reading habits and locations to the corporations that sell them. And yet none of the major e-reader manufacturers have explained to consumers in clear unequivocal language what data is being collected about them and why.

As a first step towards addressing these problems, EFF has created a first draft of our Buyer's Guide to E-Book Privacy. We've examined the privacy policies for the major e-readers on the market to determine what information they reserve the right to collect and share.

*Based on the proposed Google Books Privacy Policy. The policy is subject to change prior to final acceptance of the Google Books Settlement.
**The Nook will not ship until January 2010 and as yet has no publicly available product-specific Terms of Use or Privacy Policy. Results based on the general Barnes and Noble Privacy Policy.

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Full post as published by Electronic Freedom Foundation - Deep Links on December 21, 2009 (boomark / email).