Is “Trust Us” Good Enough?
Add the Federal Trade Commission to the growing chorus of voices expressing concern about the lack of a detailed privacy policy for Google Books. Chairman Jon Leibowitz stated that the Google Books initiative…
“…raises serious privacy challenges because of the vast amount of user information that could be collected.”
In a September 2 letter to Google Global Privacy Counsel Jane Horvath, the director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection said…
“We also agree that it is important for Google to develop a new privacy policy, specific to Google Books, that will apply to the current product, set forth commitments for future related services and features, and preserve commitments made in the existing privacy policy.”
Google’s response essentially boils down to this – Trust Us. Given Google’s silence on specifics — from privacy, to pricing, to access, to competition – we think it’s too important to leave to blind faith that Google would do the right thing for consumers if the settlement is approved.
- On Sep 3, 2009
- Posted by Peter.
- It is filed under: Uncategorized
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The mass digitization of books promises to bring tremendous value to consumers, libraries, scholars, and students. The Open Book Alliance will work to advance and protect this promise. And, by...
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5 Responses for "Is “Trust Us” Good Enough?"
[...] notes that it can’t nail down its privacy policy until the book settlement is approved. The Open Book Alliance mocks that Google’s privacy promises: Given Google’s silence on specifics — from privacy, to pricing, to access, to competition – [...]
Google Books and writers’ rights…
Writers and publishers (including self-publishers) of “books” including out-of-print-books (and actually including many magazines, journals, chapbooks, ephemera, etc.), have until 4 September 2009 to decide what to do about a proposed settlement of m…
Google’s response to the FTC’s request for a special books privacy policy is pathetic. It says absolutely nothing that addresses the very problem that has many librarians objecting to Google Books.
The most glaring omission is that Google has not specified a reasonable retention policy for the unique cookie ID and IP address data that it will collect from non-account holders who access Book Search. Sure, Google needs to prevent such users from reading too much of a copyrighted book, but its present cookie and IP address retention policies are a threat to users everywhere.
How about a seven-day retention policy for a special Google Books cookie and the associated IP address? No one will wait a week to read more pages from the same book. With short retention of this data, it will be closer to what libraries do — libraries normally delete the book data on borrowers when the book is returned. This would also help ensure that the data isn’t used by Google for behavioral ad targeting.
A seven-day retention policy would mean that if lawyers or judges come looking for data on reading habits, there is no data for them to find. It is not illegal in most civilized countries for libraries or search engines to fail to retain user data.
Google answered the FTC with what they do best, by saying nothing at all that’s even worth reading. By the way, there’s a reason why Amazon’s objection to the Settlement didn’t mention “privacy” anywhere. Amazon.com is just as guilty as Google when it comes to unreasonable retention for book access data. The FTC should come down hard on both of them.
[...] See Also: Is “Trust Us” Good Enough? (via Open Book Alliance Blog) [...]
[...] sympathy lies with the OBA which has raised quite a few questions about Google Books including privacy and economic/access issues. The controversy over the Google Books court settlement is something I [...]
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