As a gadget junky and a bookseller, I've felt a bit torn about e-book readers since Sony's first model hit the market a few years ago.  Amazon's Kindle, and now the Kindle 2.0, with their always-on connection to the Amazon store and nifty note-taking capabilities, have only weakened my resistence.  But something I read this morning may have helped to stiffen my resolve.  Stephanie at URBZEN has written about a feature in the Kindle that should worry anyone who cares even a little about privacy.

Much like the way your computer checks for software updates, the Kindle periodically checks for updates to the texts you've purchased from their store.  It's not hard to imagine cases where this could be useful.  A book on Adobe Photoshop, for instance, could be updated as bug fixes and other patches are made to the software itself.  The reader could be fairly certain that the manual is always up to date.  But what about other "updates"?

From UrbZen:

Consider what might happen if a scholar releases a book on radical Islam exclusively in a digital format. The US government, after reviewing the work, determines that certain passages amount to national security threat, and sends Amazon and the publisher national security letters demanding the offending passages be removed. Now not only will anyone who purchases the book get the new, censored copy, but anyone who had bought the book previously and then syncs their Kindle with Amazon—to buy another book, pay a bill, whatever—will, probably unknowingly, have the old version replaced by the new, “cleaned up” version on their device. The original version was never printed, and now it’s like it didn’t even exist. What’s more, the government now has a list of everyone who downloaded both the old and new versions of the book.

A little paranoid, maybe, but in light of what we've seen in the last eight years in the way of privacy violations, not all that far-fetched.  My books may be edge-worn and dog-eared and take up too much room in my house, but I like knowing they're mine.  That's one assurance the Kindle doesn't offer at the moment.