Americans are reading digital books at a rate of three out of ten.
In a market where the majority of readers are subject to both Big Publishing's greed and those of Big Tech, it is no surprise that these readers are subject to both the greed of Big Publishing and the priorities of Big Tech when it comes to accessing online textbooks or checking out the latest bestseller from the public library.
The truth is that the real product of Big Tech companies like Amazon has nothing to do with books since the real product is their technology.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos's secret weapon is the data that is collected from his customers.
There's no doubt that Amazon's retail empire has been built on a complex network of infrastructures, and questionable working practices, but without an intricate understanding of what millions of people buy and browse every day, Amazon's success would be unimaginable.
Ever since Amazon expanded its business beyond selling books, it became obsessed with the data it was collecting on its users.
As Amazon has grown, so has its data collection operations.
Former Amazon executives told the BBC in 2020 that their company was not only a retailer, but also a data company.
Rather than allowing Big Tech to monitor what people read and where they read them, major publishers are allowing Big Tech to monitor what they read. This includes books on sensitive topics, like if someone checks out a book about self-awareness.
Worse still, they are snooping on the data that their reading habits reveal.
They can still spy on people who read digital books over the internet as long as they meet the minimum requirements of federal law.
An anti-monopoly coalition submitted a letter to Congress last week calling for a congressional hearing on reader surveillance.
There is also a report that Amazon is facing problems with regulators because of its data collection practices.
Amazon's European headquarters are based in Luxembourg, which is where data protection regulators are planning to issue a $425 million GDPR fine due to its use of people's data, according to the Wall Street Journal on June 10.
Amazon officials declined to comment on the possibility of a $425 million fine.
The data that Amazon can collect from devices such as Ring and Alexa is becoming a more and more important backbone of government for Amazon.
Several Amazon customers have praised Amazon for its ability to safeguard their privacy and fought government demands for the data they hold.
As a result, Amazon defeated these demands and won both cases, even though the ruling concentrated on the threat to e-commerce rather than the threat to freedom of expression in each case.
Facebook was recently the target of a class-action lawsuit filed in May by plaintiffs alleging that it had collected data from its users on their online activities.
A draft communications data bill that was introduced by the government last month has caused alarm in the UK. This bill will allow the home secretary to force a wider range of service providers to store data for up to one year, raising concerns about the bill.
This Cyber News was published on www.cysecurity.news. Publication date: Fri, 15 Dec 2023 14:43:12 +0000