Slashdot Mirror
Author's Guild Says Kindle's Text-To-Speech Software Illegal
Mike writes "The Author's Guild claims that the new Kindle's text-to-speech software is illegal, stating that 'They don't have the right to read a book out loud,' said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. 'That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.' Forget for a moment that text-to-speech doesn't copy an existing work. And forget the odd notion that the artificial enunciation of plain text is equivalent to a person's nuanced and emotive reading. The Guild's claim is that even to read out loud is a production akin to an illegal copy, or a public performance."
Do you hear the sound of the words echo through your head as you read words, like me? Well, as the copyright owner of this comment, I forbid such usage- and deny you the ablity to read this comment out loud to your friends either.
Seriously though, despite this being a rediculous idea, what is the Authors' Guild actually trying to do here?
I mean, if anybody is really pushing to create more copyright holder rights, it's Amazon and the Kindle. Let's review...
-The right to not let my friends borrow my book when I'm finished reading it? Check.
-The right to not resell my book on the used books market when I'm done? Check.
-The right to having access to my books revoked on a whim if my provider goes out of business, or *gasp* decides it's not a profitable market (MSN Music, I'm looking at you)? Check.
With all these rights landgrabs that Amazon is making with their digital books on Amazon (and heck, digital media in general), I'd assumed they were colluding with the Author's Guild. I mean, if nobody can share your books, and nobody can help spread the buzz surrounding your great ideas or fiction... that means you'll make more sales... right?
To hell with all of them. I'll read quietly, or out loud when ever I please. And just for being assholes, I'm going to pirate the next book published by a guild author. And I'm going to listen to Microsoft Sam read it to me. And I'm going to pretend to like it.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
Shes going to be pissed.
Sometimes I read a portion of a book out loud - to myself - in order to slow down my thought processes. It is akin, I think, to taking notes when being lectured. The act of reading out loud alters both the rate and the quality of my understanding of the text.
Which, according to Paul Aiken, means I'm a criminal.
Speaking as the owner of one of the oldest SF-specialized literary agencies in the country, and as someone who is quite interested in protecting author's rights for all the obvious reasons, I think Aiken has fallen off the cognitive cliff, and that he does no one - not authors, not consumers, not publishers - any favors by pushing this over-the-top interpretation of what an "audio performance" is.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I'm pretty sure the blind have been using this sort of software for years, in fact I'm sure of it. Are they also going to threaten Apple and all the other software vendors who supply this much-needed resource for the blind? Did they even *think* about the deeper implications of what they're saying before firing the opening volley in what is, at its heart, a blatantly pissy money grab?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
All this revolves around are audio books sales. Forget the fact that right now synthesized text to speech is painful to listen vs a human voice, this is just another case of technology slowly making one industry obsolete.
They might as well sue teachers or those libraries that offer children's programs by reading a book out loud.
They say nothing makes more problems than solutions, and I feel the concept of intellectual property taking this to extreme.
Does this meant that my blind friends who use JAWS to read websites are breaking the law or infringing copyrights? Another excuse for a lawsuit or settlement...
-- For evil to triumph it is enough that good men do nothing.
So waitaminute...by Aiken's logic, wouldn't screen readers and other accessibility tools fall under this category as well? That's a losing battle if ever I've seen one...urm, heard one.
Posterity, my posterior.
Also, there will be a small royalty charge for moving your lips as you read. This has two benefits. There will be fewer people moving their lips as they read. And there will be fewer people reading.
-Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Before the days of IT technology producing sound from text required a performance.
Now sound from text is a programmed translation. No more different or complex than the rendering of the book PDF information on the screen.
Welcome to the information age. Data is data and rendering translations are done all over the place, ascii to display bits. HTML to display. GIF, JPEG to images, MPEG to sound, MPEG to video. ascii, pdf or html to sound is no more difficult or complex. Just a little newer.
I'm sitting here thinking that no lawyer could possibly be dumb enough to advise their client with this legal theory. Even if we accept this concept at face value (which it does have some value related to public performances and derivitive works), fair use throws a huge monkey wrench into any potential lawsuits. Courts have repeatedly held up that once you are sold a copy of a product, you are entititled to privately do whatever you want with it. That includes space and time shifting. Text to speech is just another type of space shifting. i.e. Moving from one medium to another.
Then I realized that there's no way Mr. Aiken is serious about these threats. He's posturing in an attempt to force Amazon to rethink the text-to-speech in light of their audio book business. This becomes especially clear based on the response from an Amazon spokesperson:
So never fear! The world isn't quite upside down yet. This is just business as usual. Someone's trying to play a weak hand and hopes the other side folds. (Good luck with that.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Do people buy both? I've always thought people bought one or the other. Long haul truckers and blind people buy audio versions, and others buy the written versions. I don't think Kindle will change that.
I can see people taking advantage of this, like someone listening instead of reading while cleaning the house or something, but that person would probably never think to buy an audio version of the book. I can't see there being enough lost sales to care.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
In the immortal words of Al Gore: Do they have a "controlling legal authority" for that interpretation of copyright law, or is this just a legal posture, that is not supported by law or precedent?
dave
This is indeed the road to Tycho.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Rumor has it that if they are successful, the Authors Guild will next file suit against God for providing a source of light outside in daytime.
Same authors guild who want a royalty on all used book sales?
Guys, do the world a favor, go play in traffic.
Ladies and gentlemen! A full-contact legal battle for the ages!
In this corner, we have the Author's Guild, with the full weight of American copyright law behind them.
And in this corner, we've got the National Federation for the Blind, swinging a big stick: the Americans with Disabilities Act!
Gentlemen ... FIGHT!
And that's how copyright law works.
No, that's how copyright law is twisted, taken out of context, and used as a club to bully people with. My goodness, if I put a colored filter over a book and read it in a different light, I am now producing a derivative work. If I take a book and rip a page out, this is now a derivative work. If I write something in the margin, I have produced a derivative work. And heaven forbid I lend my book to a friend, learn from it and try to use my skills or (shudder) donate a book to a public library - those are violations of the "new" spin on copyright law that could land me in jail!
Enjoy your death by legislation. Me I will continue to live in a sane country.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Back in the good, really old days, one's own work being read out loud was considered an honor.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Slashdot comments are not legal advice. Run them past your attorney if you have questions.
By their reasoning, all of my elementary school teachers are criminals.
Not exactly. The performance of a work as part of face-to-face teaching takes advantage of several limitations of copyright's scope, both implicit in fair use (17 USC 107) and explicit (17 USC 110(1)). Besides, 17 USC 110(4) would appear to make this whole article not apply.
and that sentiment is:
FUCK OFF, YOU GREEDY STUPID ASSHOLES!
have a nice day.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
How do they respond to the ADA and various regulations that mandate things like designing websites so that they can be read by screen readers? How's this any different from that? Just think--millions and millions of parents are now copyright infringers for reading "Goodnight Moon" or "The Cat in the Hat" to their kids!
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
"Once upon a time, Natalie Portman had a big bowl of hot grits..."
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
...at bedtime. Well, my 5-year-old will (she can't read yet). Even my 9-year-old likes it when I read stories to them at bedtime. Little did I know that it was a criminal act...
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Spend the $.41 or whateverit'satthesedays for a stamp and scribble down a short note telling them to get Aiken to STFU.
Add a disclaimer at the bottom indicating that Aiken must read the letter himself (it can't be read by his secretary to him) and that he must not move his lips while doing so. Anything else would require that he pays audio royalties to the author of the letter. He can't have it both ways.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Reading something out loud is pretty much the definition of performance, and if done for an unspecified number greater than 1, is public in aggregate (multiple single readings)
True, it's performance. But from the definition of "publicly" in 17 USC 101, I don't see how individual private performances of a single copy constitute performances done "publicly" when repeated in front of separate audiences. Otherwise, owning a tape deck would infringe copyright law because I can play a tape multiple times to different people. Can you cite other statutes or case law supporting your interpretation?
if not immediate fact (multiple person audience).
Don't plug the headphone jack into a public address system, and it's not public. Even some public performances would appear to meet a statutory limitation of the exclusive right under U.S. law as long as nobody charges admission: 17 USC 110(4).
The fact that various situations exist which seem to contradict Aiken's assertions do not invalidate his assertions
Yes it does. Per Sony v. Universal, a device feature does not infringe copyright if it has substantial non-infringing use.
If the copyright claim is based on a public performance, then the person who must be sued in the lawsuit is the performer, because they are the ones infringing on the copyright. In this case, the performer is the kindle itself.
If the kindle is the performer, as an entity without legal status, then the responsible party would be the owner of the entity, in this case, the customer. NOT Amazon.
How are we expected to take organizations like this seriously when they make claims like this? I mean, really?! So blind people who use text-to-speech software in order to "read" books have been breaking the law?
Basic suggestion: get 50 people. Go to the "Author's Guild" offices, stage a sit-in, and everyone start reading some book aloud.
To make it REALLY funny, make it a freely-available Creative Commons book. Maybe Free Culture by Lessig.
The article only covers a public comment by the head of the Authors Guild.
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
Don't make them prove the pen is mightier than the sword. League of Extraordinary Barristers to the rescue!
If you must keep groaning, please try to do it in a rhythm I can dance to
No I paid extra to have Stephen Hawking read the book.
I think the point here is that what current text to voice converters are ghastly, this will not always be the case. In the future you will be able to have Marylin Monroe or John F. Kennedy read your book outloud and it will sound exactly right.
They are selling the book in a DRM form precisely so they can split the reading rights from the voice rights. Ideally they can make more profit that way. You are free to buy it in both forms. You might not like that but if there is competition in the market one can presume an efficient market can deliver each at a lower cost as a result of the extra profit to be made. So in theory it could benefit the consumer. And indeed the DRM versions are cheaper than than the print version in many cases.
You might object to that because it seems like you lost some traditional right of ownership. But until people invented text -to voice converters you never missed this did you? it's only when this became possible that you noticed that they did not want you to do it. so it's not a traditional right. Moreover, if you read the book out loud yourself then sold the recornding you would have been sued.
SO they do have a point.
The place where it goes off the rails is if you use this to listen to the book with no intention of reselling the voice conversion. What's wrong with that? DOn't you "own" it.
I think the answer is that, it's not you that committed the infringement, it's Amazon for making it possible. Afterall amazon sells both forms written and audio. Now they are selling both for the price of the DRM written version. You can see why the booksellers are mad.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
That's the worst car analogy in the history of slashdot!
Sorry pals, but this is ridiculous. This kind of attitude is precisely why several years ago I started my own copyright war. I have not cared about copyrights and feel free to do whatever I want with the information I get. It started when I realized that I could not use my laptop to watch DVD's I rented while traveling in Europe (the matSHITa drive had extra layers of protection that AnyDVD could not break). Continued with the realization that DVD's bought there could not then be played (without hacking my devices) in my US system. Where is MY right to use my devices to see my bought/rented dvds? I paid for the devices and DVDs, but some screwed up "rights" system does not allow me to use them without going through some hoops: hack the system and then get them back. You know what? Now that I have a hacked system I may as well go all the way and disregard the producer's rights as they disregarded mine.
Of course. You read it aloud, record it and then process it through a speech-recognizing software, and - bingo! Encryption broken. It is more of an analog hole really. I am waiting anxiously for the equivalent of HDCP for e-books. Perhaps a device that scramble the letters if it hears you reading the text. It will be mandatory in every ebook reader or consumer oriented OS, of course, or else you can't upload text to it. The IP must be protected at all costs from these damn pirates.
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
A performance is *not* a copy. Under 17 U.S.C. 101, a copy is a *material object*. It also has to be "fixed," which (again S. 101) means the copy has to exist for "more than a transitory duration."
No derivative work is created here, either because the creation of a work means fixing it in a copy or phonorecord, neither of which is happening here.
Tepples already addressed your public performance point, so I won't reiterate that.
The closest example, actually, is if you were very good at reading books out loud, and you rented out a theatre, advertised that you were going to read Harry Potter books, sold tickets, and had complete strangers pay to come in to listen to you reading them. The copyright holders would be quite within their rights to ask you to stop, because you've set up a textbook public performance of their work.
Note that the question isn't whether people who are in possessions of a book infringe the copyright by reading it out loud. The question is whether Amazon infringes the copyrights by selling both the e-books and a machine that reads them out loud. It's not quite the same as the textbook case shown above of a public performance of the work, but neither is it the same as privately reading a book out loud; the argument would go that there is no theater hall, but other than that, Amazon is "selling tickets" to the public to have Amazon read the work out loud to you.
So there is possibly a real question here as to where the line between public performance and fair use lies.
PS note that the argument is all about whether Amazon, which is the seller, is infringing the copyrights on the works that it sells. Contrary to what the bulk of the comments to this story assume, whether the buyers or people downstream from them infringe the books doesn't seem to be the problem here; if you have a copy of a book and you read it out loud to yourself, to your children or your friends, you're clear; these are not public performances of the work.
Are you adequate?
When looking for schoolbooks for the severely dyslexic little brother of a friend we tried looking for audio books. Turned out there was an organisation which used to deal with that here. Notice "was". For schoolbooks which had no audio book available from the publisher they'd got teachers who volunteered to record audio books for blind students. Guess what the publishers thought of that. Now they aren't allowed hand out recordings to blind students and the publishers aren't interested in making or distributing any since the market is so small.
Did you check with Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic? They do require documentation of a print disability for membership.
There's no issue. If I have a contract which allows me to sell frozen burritos, but not ready-to-eat burritos, selling frozen burritos along with a microwave (which turns them into ready-to-eat burritos) doesn't violate the contract.
It seems the GP was actually saying that there is a contract for frozen burritos AND ready-to-eat burritos. And by Amazon selling frozen burritos along with a microwave, they are somehow skirting their contract for selling ready-to-eat burritos. How valid that is, who knows? Something tells me that a judge will know, at some point.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
The Guild may actually have the more "just" position. Authors, with the exception of that rare 1 percent of best sellers, are not particularly well compensated. They do it because they love the profession and have some uncomfortable compulsion that makes them write, despite a average hourly salary measure in pennies.
Currently, a mid-level author has several payment streams potentially -- one from the books themselves and one from audio recordings. The Kindle threatens to eliminate one of those payment streams. Will the world really be better off if writers get paid less than they already are?
I think the Guild is doing exactly what any membership organization should do -- advocate for its members.
America is full of people who hate freedom. They claim to love freedom. They pay lip service to freedom until they are blue in the face. And to some extent they *do* love freedom...so long as only they have it.
What they hate is when other people (specifically, their customers) have freedom. They want to have tremendous control over those who might be their customers. They want to control every aspect of what these people do, so they can ensure that they extract every single cent they possibly can from their offerings.
They don't want people to be free to use a competitor's products, let alone to make any un-paid-for use of their own products. And, to this end, they must take control of pretty much everything such people do.
So they dress up this control in false language. They say that they are now "free" to earn a living off of a creative work. They mask all of their efforts at slavery by dressing them up as if they were a form of freedom unto themselves. But the truth is obvious. They are attempting to use the legal system (and, in many cases, technological options) to prevent "the masses" from being able to do what they want to do.
As an aside, some of the more pragmatic ones stop talking about freedom and instead try to make the case that if they cannot have absolute control then they will not be able to make any profit at all from their offerings, and hence there will be no offerings. The world will fall into an empty pit of cultural deprivation. A moment's reflection reveals the falsity of this sentiment...as well as reflection upon history or plain common sense. But to those of unclear mind this argument seems compelling enough...and the innocents wind up being indoctrinated against freedom.
The end result is that those of us who truly do love freedom have to fight for it...every day....until we die. The day we stop fighting is the day we lose it all.
Does Apple's agreement with the music labels spell out that Apple's customers are allowed to burn, for their personal use, CDs of the music they buy from the iTunes Store? This could easily be a case where there is an explicit agreement that Apple's customers are allowed to do that.
I don't know the terms of Apple's agreements with the record labels, but basically, I think your argument there isn't bulletproof; it could be the case that Apple secured that ability for iTunes users by negotiating with the labels, and not on the grounds you think.
I think the challenge here is that the Kindle e-book is in a proprietary format that's specific to the Kindle device. The print copy of the tabloid and the OCR software were not specifically designed with each other in mind. This is one reason why the grocery store seller doesn't need an ebook license to sell print copies of the tabloid; even if the grocery store (somehow) sells both the print copies of the tabloid and the OCR software, since these two products are in no way tailored specifically toward each other, the store can't be held responsible for whether the buyers use them together in a way that infringes the tabloid publisher's copyrights.
E-books for Kindle, on the other hand, are not designed to be usable without the Kindle device and/or whatever other software Amazon provides. Amazon can't as easily claim that what the e-book buyers do is the sole responsibility of said buyers, because Amazon itself is the agent making it possible for their device, which comprises a proprietary e-book reader and a proprietarily formatted e-book (or so will the argument state it), to perform a spoken interpretation of the work, which falls outside the scope of the license that was given to Amazon to publish the e-book editions of the books in question (again, so will go the argument).
There's one big unknown in this whole situation, that's not being talked about: what are the precise terms of Amazon's license agreement with the book publishers? A lot of the outcome of cases like this may well turn on that.
Are you adequate?
I don't know that that's particularly relevant. It's likely that people don't buy both the electronic and the audio versions of a book, so if someone buys the ebook to play it out loud, they're probably buying it because it was cheaper than the audiobook, not because they wanted both and were getting two for one.
Yes, audiobooks might be more expensive than ebooks. Couldn't this just be a market force driving down the price of audiobooks?
Neil Gaiman has expressed his opinion of this issue in his blog.
My point of view: When you buy a book, you're also buying the right to read it aloud, have it read to you by anyone, read it to your children on long car trips, record yourself reading it and send that to your girlfriend etc. This is the same kind of thing, only without the ability to do the voices properly, and no-one's going to confuse it with an audiobook. And that any authors' societies or publishers who are thinking of spending money on fighting a fundamentally pointless legal case would be much better off taking that money and advertising and promoting what audio books are and what's good about them with it.
The Guild may actually have the more "just" position. Authors, with the exception of that rare 1 percent of best sellers, are not particularly well compensated. They do it because they love the profession and have some uncomfortable compulsion that makes them write, despite a average hourly salary measure in pennies.
Probably the same compulsion that drives lots of people to participate in various creative fields who just plain suck at it. LA is full of bad "actresses". Bars across the country are full of bad musicians - hell, some of them even charge cover to let bad singers sing! And don't forget bad artists....
People like to be creative. It's fun. But you don't get paid for doing something creative - you get paid for doing something creative that other people are willing to pay for.
And if nobody wants to pay for it, well, that doesn't mean you're poorly compensated. It just means you're producing crap.
paintball
(from the don't-give-them-any-ideas dept.)
Is burning books illegal too? After all, that could be considered a political statement on the original work, one that is so deeply founded in the content of the work that it could be pretty much considered a derivative work of its own: Certainly, one could not make such statement if one would not have read the original text (or at least deeply pondered its cultural significance - as we all know, certain people criticise things they just heard about).
What is the Author's Guild going to do to stop that particular flagrant and deeply offensive misuse of author's rights?
</sarcasm>