Some new Amazon Kindle features are pointing to the potential conveniences, and privacy concerns, of the new world of electronic books.

Turns out Amazon has been offering buyers of Kindle electronic books that contain errors the chance to wirelessly download a corrected version of the work — something that would be impossible to achieve with physical books. At the same time, Amazon's policy of recording passages that people highlight in Kindle books and listing the most popular of those online is raising the ire of some privacy advocates, who object to the company monitoring reading habits.

In the case of the Kindle book corrections, Amazon asks a buyer's permission before sending them a "patch" update. The Wall Street Journal's Digits blog spoke to author F. Paul Wilson, whose book "An Enemy of the State" lost some chapters in converting to Kindle format and later got a patch.

Wilson called such updates "a thing of beauty" because they allow for quick fix, but also said the feature could give authors the ability to "tinker forever" with their works, which may not be such a good thing.

Kindle's highlighted passages feature, meantime, is sparking some heated debate.

Amazon, as part of a recent Kindle software upgrade, has been collecting data on the most highlighted passages in Kindle e-books, and publishing the results online. (The top highlighted passages are currently from Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers," William P. Young's "The Shack," and Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol.")

It's anonymous and aggregated data, and people have the ability to opt out of the data collection, according to Amazon. But some are concerned with the implications of the feature.

Msnbc.com's The Red Tape Chronicles, which has a good breakdown of the privacy issues around the Kindle highlighted passages, quotes privacy consultant Larry Ponemon:

"From a privacy point of view there's a creepiness factor," he said. "Reading is one of those things that is very personal, something you do in your own space. How you read and what you emphasize is really important to people.” He compared the service to a Web site that tracks users’ surfing habits with even more precision than is available today.

Red Tape also quotes Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener, who points out the data is aggregated and says, "The response from customers has been very positive. They are finding popular highlights to be fun, interesting, and helpful."

This isn't the first time Amazon has been criticized for mucking around in people's Kindles (see the remote deletion of Orwell's "1984"), and likely isn't the last. As the electronic book market matures, questions about privacy and control of e-book content are likely to become more prominent.

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