Comments on: Amazon, Overdrive, and Other Reasons to Be Pissed

By: Frank

Frank — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:00:50 +0000

While I applaud the diligence, remember you can create and use an alias Amazon account with no personal information, no credit card, and OverDrive/Amaazon will work just fine.

By: James Moushon

James Moushon — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:07:10 +0000

Great thread. I have been following Sarah, Bobbi and David’s blogs for a while now and I was glad to find this one. Andy, great job.

Maybe I can add something here from a little different perspective. Amazon has other motives besides accumulating our information. Besides the sales motive, this move into libraries strengthens their position against the Nook and Barnes and Noble.

Overdrive allows libraries ebook access to a title which includes all formats the ebook is published in. For a long time Nook had most of the action. Then suddenly Kindle jumps in with three times as many device users plus access via computer and mobile phone.

Now the Kindle and the Nook users are battling for the same ebook access copy.

Amazon is playing on availability or lack of it. Patrons, finding many of the newer titles all checked out, look for other alternatives. Amazon says ‘Buy Here’.

I believe it is more about squeezing Barnes and Noble then the reader’s information.

My blog: The eBook Author’s Corner
http://hbspublications.blogspot.com/

By: iLibrarian » Amazon, Overdrive, and Other Reasons to Be Pissed

iLibrarian » Amazon, Overdrive, and Other Reasons to Be Pissed — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 20:11:49 +0000

[...] about the Overdrive-Amazon e-book arrangement and the reactions in the biblio-blogosphere titled Amazon, Overdrive, and Other Reasons to Be Pissed. This insightful article offers the author’s own take on the situation and does a great job [...]

By: eskimette

eskimette — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 16:23:47 +0000

This is a great discussion on this topic. The deal may not be perfect, but I personally think the outrage is a bit overblown.

In my library, customers are all about employee-owned IT. They don’t want to borrow our kindles anymore: they want our content delivered to their own device and they want it to be easy. Many of them are long-time kindle users, They are thusly comfortable with Amazon knowing what they buy and they don’t care if Amazon knows which books they borrow. Before even looking at Overdrive options, Amazon already knows plenty about these customer’s reading and shopping habits.

As someone above mentioned, if the fish stinks, don’t buy it. Tell your customers that you can no longer provide OD /Kindle service until the vendor tries to work with your terms and tries to understand our motivations. Some customers will be grateful that you are acting in their best interests and others will condemn you for being over-protective gatekeepers of information.

Although you do not need to enter a credit card number to have an amazon.com account, to read Kindle content you do have to have a “device” registered using a phone number or an email address in order to receive anything.

By: Susan

Susan — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:25:56 +0000

You don’t have to enter a credit card to create an Amazon account (unlike Barnes & Noble) and I don’t think you even have to enter a physical address, so theoretically Amazon really only needs your email address – especially if you use one of the free Kindle apps to read on a device like your PC and don’t even buy the kindle at all. It is the user’s responsibility to choose and manage his or her desired privacy level. When a user decides to download the Kindle version ebook from Overdrive, they have just given their consent, pursuant to section b of the law: “Disclosure is requested by the user”, so I don’t think the library has violated privacy if the transaction is at the patron’s request.

By: LOST in Libraryland « bringyournoise

LOST in Libraryland « bringyournoise — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:17:40 +0000

[...] and violation of privacy, etc. (See Librarian by Day, Librarian in Black, The Annoyed Librarian, Agnostic, Maybe, etc.) As Liz Lemon would say, what the what? Why are we wrapped up in the issues we’re [...]

By: Andy

Andy — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 19:35:06 +0000

That’s a good question. I think you can opt for it not to remember your payment information, but I don’t know what the minimum requirements are for creating an account.

By: Amanda Goodman

Amanda Goodman — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 05:32:59 +0000

Off the top of your head, do you know if you can you create an Amazon account without using personal information like payment options?

By: Bobbi Newman

Bobbi Newman — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 18:13:01 +0000

I don’t disagree, but I think its important to point out where we failed, where OverDrive failed. We did get a bad deal. We need to be aware of that.

By: Deb Czarnik

Deb Czarnik — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 13:30:17 +0000

Thanks for taking a calm and rational approach to this issue, Andy. I am wondering why everyone is missing one point. OverDrive is not passing patron data (not even a barcode) to Amazon during these transactions!
They are sending only identifying ebook data to an Amazon account. Any Amazon account. When the patron chooses to use their Amazon account with personal data, does that account then become a library record? I think not.

Another option is for the patron to create an anonymous Amazon account for their library checkouts.

Of course, this is not obvious, but it is the first release of this functionality and we can ask OverDrive to make improvements and messaging to inform our patrons to help them make informed choices.

I think OverDrive is cognizant of library issues with patron privacy, and that is why they do not share patron data in their part of the Amazon transaction. They may not have realized the extent of library responsibility for informing patrons of their privacy choices beyond their part of the transaction.

I believe OD worked hard to negotiate this service with Amazon, but they were at the mercy of a company that could care less about library users. Amazon dictated the rules, not allowing disclosure about any details of the program, to the point that OD could not effectively beta test with a library partner.

I am certain that OD has learned from this experience, and will be sure to negotiate library testing (and input) into future 3rd party development agreements in the future. In the meantime, we can work with them to inform them of the need for more explanation about data privacy to the patron in the transaction so they can address it.

The bottom line is that no patron data is shared from OverDrive, and Amazon retains tight control over how customers use their Kindles. And that is not OverDrive’s fault.