From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]> Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2014 15:35:29 -0500 I have been working on a Mellon-funded research project on how university presses can and could sell books, print and digital, directly from their Web sites. Here is a summary of the project: http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2014/01/06/announcing-a-university-press-research-project/ 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? I would be interested to learn from members of this list how institutional privacy policies are implemented. In particular, I would like to learn if any academic institution is using cookies. I am myself completely torn about these issues. I understand why information is collected, but I dislike becoming a cog in an online marketing machine. Thank you for your assistance. Joe Esposito Processed Media [log in to unmask] @josephjesposito +Joseph Esposito