The german it-news site heise.de (
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldu...s-2412910.html) reports they have reproduced ADE 4's sending home of plain text usage data, but not (yet) the scanning of local storage for ebook files.
Ok - the net isn't an extension of our homes but a very public place (which I think we enter more or less naked). With all the media use over the net we do enter this public place for our convenience mostly. Think about all the data needed only for syncing reading positions between devices/apps:
- book a opened at pos x at time 123 on device abc
- book a closed at pos y at time 234 on device abc
- book a opened at pos y at time 345 on device def
...
And the book has to be identified (meta-data), logs have to be kept update if the devices/apps are used offline. So with that alone there is a good database of our reading habits on external servers (your ebook provider, drm service) which may be used for data mining.
We can still trade in convenience for more privacy not buying DRMed books, not using syncing services etc. and still enjoy our ebooks offline.
Iirc the early Kindles where rumored to send a good deal of usage data home. Early iTunes versions scanned our hard drives for music files, didn't they? The rationale was the data being used for market research aiming at improving the services for the consumer. But why needs Adobe - not being a publisher or retailer afaik - data about our reading habits?
I see some big players in the industry pushing towards an always online, streaming only distribution of ebooks with books- or even pages-based flatrates as the coming business model. They are testing the waters with various offers and collect user data. If they see it working they will do it.
For me at least "ereading/ebooks" could be a short episode of my reading history.