One of the things that we discovered, as more members of my family got kindles, is that it's easy to switch the account that your kindle is on. When you switch accounts you get access to all the books on that account. It also doesn't remove any of the books you already have on your kindle (just don't archive them).

Now, Is it sanctioned/legal? Nope. It's questionable at best, but the Amazon rep who basically explained the loophole to us said that there was no issue switching the account a kindle was on. The only issue is that there are download limits to books (another reason never to "archive" off your kindle), so it's not something that works on a massive scale, but for small groups that lend a lot, it's actually way nicer than paper books.

Here's how I parse this:

"Yes, we knowingly steal your data, but we do it through an semi-willing intermediary, so it's ok." - Microsoft

I'm not sure how because they are pulling the results through someone else, it's ok. That's like saying because I didn't pirate this piece of software directly, but downloaded it from a pirate site, it's fine.

"In what could be the most extreme and influential crowdsourcing project ever ..

Isn't it a little early to call something like this "the most extreme and influential crowdsourcing"? Not that it's the end-all metric of popularity, but it has 16 follows so far 25 facebook likes for god's sake. Slow down a bit before you hurt yourself.