[phonon]

Uh, store a log file of every user action in that book, and send those log files to the mothership periodically, as internet is available? It does not have to be same day, just eventually.

Analyzing log files for duration/pages visited is probably easier than the equivalent for web server logs, and there are very many services that will analyze those for you.

[bduerst]

Yeah, I'm not getting the "This is a very difficult problem to solve" take on this.

The books currently track by location point and you could log on blocks (e.g. every 100 location points progressed).

Amazon's books are already DRM'd to hell, meaning the kindle has to use the unlimited books through the marketplace. Then it's just a matter of reporting user stats, which can be covered in the Unlimited TOS.

[levemi]

You're still trusting the client. Any system that trusts the client is flawed. Time to read per page varies, and if you read the original article it says the scammers are mitigating chances of alerts by clicking through a book over a three day period. You're going to find people who click through at very cost efficient means somewhere in the world when you're making $60,000 a month from this scam.

[bduerst]

You would still need to force the users through each page.

Fast-reading bad actor accounts can be flagged as abusers through pattern recognition. Since a subscription is necessary, creating numerous accounts to game the system becomes expensive fast.

[VLM]

This is kind of rough for technical or reference-ish books. Perfectly OK for fiction... well, except for anthologies and collections (HAL 9000 says I'm sorry Dave, I can't let you skip past the other Arthur C Clarke stories in this anthology, you'll have to read all the stories in order, at an acceptably slow speed)

I subscribe to F+SF and it would annoy me if I were technically prevented from skipping the end of stories that don't resonate with me.

[bduerst]

Sorry, I meant the abusers would need to force their fraudulent user accounts through each page.

Normal people who don't find a book engaging can still skip the end, just that they'll (justifiably) be worth less to the author.

[imaginenore]

They don't have to be fast-reading. They can just create a fake log, and send it to the mothership after an appropriate period of time.

Still, I will agree that that will make scammers' lives harder.

[bduerst]

Since only paid accounts are used in revenue attribution, faking logs for your own accounts would never work.

[otterley]

Amazon writes the client software (and ships hardware). If the clients communicate securely with the servers, Amazon should be able to trust them.

(I'm excluding Kindle Web Viewer, of course. Perhaps it should not have access to Kindle Unlimited.)

[DanBC]

Fucking horrific level of data collection.

[kbenson]

Yes, it is, but unfortunately I'm not sure how to get around it in a system where you aren't actually buying the goods, but borrowing them and then they are required to know how much of it you used. Thankfully you can still buy books outright if you don't want to be tracked (sort of. All KU books are Amazon exclusive, so Amazon will at least track that you bought it).

That said, Amazon is already syncing your location,and any annotations you've made[1] so they persist across all kindle devices, so there's already a bunch of tracking in place. Given that there's already some tracking, I wouldn't be too opposed to a per-page bit for whether it was read, triggered when the page has been lingered on for five or more seconds (scaled down to 1 second for partial pages, such as ends of chapters).

1: Anyone remember the big episode years back over Amazon realizing they didn't have the license to a book, then removing it from all Kindle devices automatically, including the annotations made? In what is possibly the most ironic situation I can imagine, the book was 1984.

[VLM]

Speaking of time, why not bill by minutes spent reading instead of pages turned?

[ralmeida]

I believe this would create a bad incentives structure. You'd penalize the author for people getting hooked to the book (and therefore getting into the 'flow' and reading faster), and encourage scammers to just linger on pages (probably making the scam even easier).

Plus, lots of significant ambiguities to solve: user is reading a page, gets up to do something else, forgets Kindle open. How many minutes do you bill? This might be solvable with the proper signals and rules, but I believe this is far from trivial.

[DanHulton]

Way more in-depth levels of data collection happen on literally every single page of the web, for reference.

If you're comfortable browsing the internet, this level of reporting on a Kindle seems almost quaint by comparison.

[Paul-ish]

> If you're comfortable browsing the internet, this level of reporting on a Kindle seems almost quaint by comparison.

Yeah, I'm not okay with that other tracking either. In addition, I am paying for my Kindle and my Kindle books or KU subscription. It used to be only free services tracked you, but I guess that limitation is coming to an end.

[vkjv]

This. It doesn't even really need to be a log. A bitset with each bit representing a page and a `1` representing "this page read" would do the trick. On a massive 8000 page tomb, that's only 1kb.

If Amazon doesn't need the exact pages read, POPCNT the total and send that.

[y4mi]

...that wouldn't change anything. They'd just change the report file to to sync straight 1s... no, you still need obfuscation and encryption, bloating it to at least 100kb.

but thats still pretty minor

[vkjv]

I don't think you gain much by forging this number on a single device and you wouldn't be able to manipulate this on ALL devices.

The reason the scam worked is that it encourages all readers to jump to the end of the book (via a link on the first page). I don't think there would be an equivalent way to force people to page through and pause on each page.

[ralmeida]

That may not make the scam totally impractical to all but the most dedicated hackers, but it does increase the scam costs substantially. Maybe enough to remove the low-hanging-fruit from the scammers and have them target elsewhere.

So, I don't think "that wouldn't change anything".

[Spivak]

And you don't think that those logs can be faked? It might stop the casual, "hey fans, read this 'book' to support me" but it wont stop the real scammers or people who would buy reads for revenue and ratings.

[phonon]

Kindles are pretty locked down...it's not that difficult to have the kindle sign the data it sends (probably does that already). Being scammed by hacked kindles is one thing, but they're not even trying here...

[odbol_]

You could easily sign the log with the same certificate that is providing the DRM on the book itself. Or a different certificate. Encrypting things is not new, nor hard.

[bduerst]

Doesn't work.

You would need to fake the logs for paid accounts, and since rev sharing is a formula of all paid subscriptions, you'd be hard pressed to make positive returns.