From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2014 19:27:41 -0500

Eric,

This is fascinating.

Some questions, if I may.  Are you suggesting that the use of Google
Analytics necessarily results in cookies being placed on users'
machines (as I suspect)?  Is this being done without the knowledge of
the publishers--is it, in other words, an aspect of Google Analytics
and not a deliberate decision of the publishers?

Most U. presses use Google Analytics.  It would appear that there may
be a sleeping privacy issue here.

As for your suggestion that I learn how to use Google Analytics
myself, heh.  I will put it in the queue, behind rereading D.H.
Lawrence.

Joe Esposito


On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 9:48 AM, Eric Hellman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Joe,
>
> You need to learn how to use Chrome's Developer tools. I'm willing to bet that there aren't any university presses in the US that aren't using cookies in some way, although perhaps they don't realize that they're doing it.
>
> As a representative example (not to pick on them, or anything) University of Chicago Press uses Google Analytics on its web site, which uses 4 cookies to track users across the website. It also uses "scorecard research" which sets 3 more cookies. It uses previews from google books- 10 more cookies. It uses "Addthis.com". Another 12 cookies. If I add to the shopping cart, I get 12 cookies from uchicago.edu itself.
>
> So yeah, the people you've been talking to have no clue about cookies.
>
> Eric
>
> Eric Hellman
> President, Gluejar.Inc.
> Founder, Unglue.it https://unglue.it/
> http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/
> twitter: @gluejar
>
> On Feb 2, 2014, at 6:27 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > One hypothesis I had when I started out was that U. presses could have
> > trouble selling D2C because of privacy policies of the parent
> > institutions (that is, commercial organizations have fewer scruples
> > about collecting user data).  Now I am beginning to think I formulated
> > this question all wrong.  It's my understanding,  based on a number of
> > interviews with U. press personnel, that presses collect little user
> > data and don't distribute it often or widely.  I have stumbled on no
> > academic book publisher yet that places cookies on users' computers,
> > which significantly reduces the amount of information a publisher
> > could collect.  Have I simply been talking to the wrong people?