Quote:
Originally Posted by crossi
Isn't scanning your computer without permission illegal like opening and reading someone's mail? Even the government would need a warrant. How could a business get away with it? Is this a sueable invasion of privacy?
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I'm sure Adobe's lawyers have had a good, long internal chat about this. I would be surprised if they aren't in the clear, at least according to American law. Now, German law, for instance, is probably a different matter. The Germans have extremely consumer-centric privacy laws, as do a few other European countries. This practice will very likely not be legal over here.
Furthermore, this goes against what users would expect the software to do. Gathering this info and sending it off without adding user value (in fact, actively hiding it by not doing anything visible locally within the software itself), all this without asking permission, is not what most users would deem reasonable. Since discovery of this gathering of information is virtually certain, Adobe must expect a significant payout from doing it, outweighing the PR fallout they must surely be expecting. I don't know what this payout might be, although a few ideas spring to mind.
So, while I should probably boycott these bastards, I'll still keep trying to give authors my money for books I enjoy. I know it's kind of silly considering the abuse the industry is continuing to target its legitimate customers with, but there it is.
I will not, however, knowingly give Adobe my calibre library metadata (apparently along with everything else they can get their hands on). I'm currently using ADE 2.0, but will take measures with that as well even though the cat is likely out of the bag already. Which sandboxing strategy is sufficient to protect against this with a minimum of hassle? I liberate all my books, and will never knowingly buy a book which I can't decrypt. Is something like Sandboxie sufficient, or am I looking at running ADE in a Windows VM? Any tips are welcome
