Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Caves On Kindle 2 Text-To-Speech
On Wednesday we discussed news that the Authors Guild had objected to the text-to-speech function on Amazon's Kindle 2, claiming that it infringed on audio book copyright. Today, Amazon said that while the feature is legally sound, they would be willing to disable text-to-speech on a title-by-title basis at the rightsholder's request. "We have already begun to work on the technical changes required to give authors and publishers that choice. With this new level of control, publishers and authors will be able to decide for themselves whether it is in their commercial interests to leave text-to-speech enabled. We believe many will decide that it is."
Some people just like to hear themselves talk. I prefer fornication. It is pleasant.
considering that this thing is running linux, I'm going to just set my timer and see how long it is before /. is posting a story that the TTS feature has been opened up to any book.
This is the feature I was most excited about. Being able to buy a book and let it be read to me. I guess I'll have to wait and see how many publishers are disabling the text to speach feature on their books.
Talking book machines for the blind is one thing, but isn't there something just totally wrong about a book that reads itself to you?
sudo mount --milk --sugar
Which title would you buy, one that has the text 2 speech or one that doesn't? Seems like this is a value add, and any publisher would be loosing out by asking Amazon to withhold kindle.
So, Amazon in a sense wins, because I'm willing to bet most titles will end up with text 2 speech anyways.
Then again, some people buy operating systems when there are perfectly good operating systems available for free. So what do I know?
So you can't "buy" the title, can't sell it or loan it out, can't give it away, and now they can control precisely how you consume it. Is it any wonder why devices like this are doomed to fail when it comes to the mass market. People aren't complete stupid.
Even if the encryption algorithm and hardware were "unhackable", how hard could it be to set up a robot finger to press "Next Page" + a digital camera to photograph each page + OCR if desired????
Have a Kindle title which you want TTS (and it was forbidden)? Just convert it to regular text, as above, and poof, TTS.
Unless Amazon is going to start checking the files you TTS/read on your Kindle for copyright violations, I suppose.
Why am I cheering about what seems to be a complete breakdown of what geeks want?
Simple - for most books, the "rightsholder" is the AUTHOR, not the publisher. (This is the opposite situation from the music industry.)
So authors will need to contact Amazon to disable this, and I'm betting that generally they won't bother. If the book publishers tell Amazon to do it, Amazon can just point out that the copyright is not in their control.
Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
Although seriously questionable legally, if the authors guild was able to prove that Text-To-Speech of copyright books was copyright infringement then that would be absolutely huge.
Tons of disabled people already depend on text-to-speech and with an ever older populace this is only going to become even more important to everyone.
Plus, where does the copyright end? If someone makes a book reference in public will they get their butt sued? Or will we have to get a public display licence to have a conversation now?
Ultimately Amazon shouldn't concede on this. In fact I want this to be legally tested and put to rest asap.
Copyright does not give the property holder the right to tell users what color/brand glasses they are allowed to wear when reading a particular title and this is really no different. Amazon/Kindle should stick to their guns and let the end user decide to turn on the TTS engine or not. Besides, most people can read a lot faster than even the fastest discernible speech.
...etc
Amazon could easily disable TTS in an un-hackable way. Assuming these books are PDFs, Amazon could replace every other word with a picture of that word; it would look identical to the original, but would kill TTS. I do not know the hardware specification of Kindle, but I assume it has enough storage space for that and that OCR would be tough on its CPU.
Personally, I would demand lower prices for TTS-disabled books. I should not be paying the same amount that I would for a non-disabled book, and I certainly should be paying more for a book that is not disabled. Maybe I'll just go back to reading books from Project Gutenberg until this all settles down...
Palm trees and 8
As a way to fund slashdot
you really ought to require
the money-whore-banker-lawyers
who usurp common technology and
then announce that it is 'there idea'
and post BS about their 'functionality'
and how they are going to play-nice with
people who they are stealing copyrights from . . .
that those money-whore-banker-lawyer companies
ought to pay slash-dot for the free advertisements.
Let's see, software tablet with text to speach:
a 10 year old lab top with Linux running festival
And will there be an override for people with disabilities? If not, I hope that the blind and other people with disabilities sue Amazon for removing a capability that should legally be required, By law, it is not a violation of copyright for a blind person to use text-to-speech for any book.
This may be flame bait, but does anyone else really not care about this DRM laden device? I feel like people here generally agree that the DMCA, DRM, RIAA, and a lot of other acronyms are bad, however, the Kindle seems to break the rules and suddenly be cool? When someone jailbreaks it and allows the use of admittedly nice looking display without being tied to Amazon's DRM I will be interested. Until then, stop, please.
Tons of disabled people already depend on text-to-speech and with an ever older populace this is only going to become even more important to everyone.
People with disabilities can use specialized devices, which are made available only by prescription to people with a qualifying disability, that play copies of works produced under an exception to the U.S. copyright statute (17 USC 121). Kindle 2, being available to all, does not meet this requirement.
This is a perfect example of why DRM is wrong in all respects. Hey, I agree, authors need a revenue stream, but damn it, people who pay money for a work shouldn't have to keep paying to use it.
Copyright is a balance between the rights of an author and the good of society. We have lost "the society" as a stake holder in the discussion.
If you produce a medium that prevents the "fair use" of the content, then I believe you should not have the force of copyright to protect you.
Which title would you buy, one that has the text 2 speech or one that doesn't?
Novels tend not to have close substitutes. Say both Anne Rice and Stephenie Meyer decide to turn off text-to-speech. Would someone who depends on text-to-speech (but doesn't qualify for a section 121 device) have to switch from vampire stories to something else? Or how would you work around having text-to-speech turned off in the textbooks that your instructor has assigned?
Then again, some people buy operating systems when there are perfectly good operating systems available for free.
Because operating systems aren't perfect substitutes either. There are plenty of apps and devices that run on Windows, but they neither run nor have close substitutes on Wine/Linux or ReactOS.
While one can argue about the impact on music, books, reading, spread of knowledge, has always been a singularly important practice, this whole scandal has been about greed, and nothing more, people want their money. Its a shame that as a society we cave to monetary demands and forget the importance that information should be free.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
And will there be an override for people with disabilities?
No, because they use something other than Kindle.
Publishers won't be makin' a penny offa me for this "added value" anyway... I have to subvocalize when I read, so I wouldn't want to hear anyone but the voices already inside my head. Ooops, gotta go, one of them wants something....
This is a big blow for future development of AI!
As with everything in capitalistic scientific advancement, and foremost in the military, development works best if there is a future practical application in sight. So far NLP (NOT [god beware] Neurolinguistic Programming, but Natural Language Processing) and AI research didn't make big strides because they are just fiddling around with no real idea what to use this for. But with the Kindle 2, we have the first actual application which would benefit from near-perfect text-to-speech. So this will (or would have, or still will, after Amazon now caved in?) spur development of t2s systems that can actually understand what they are saying, on a certain level. And further from that, that's my prophecy, true AI systems will develop because you just have to start somewhere. But now.. well I guess they will still do research on how to read the books that they may the best way.
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
Although I find it abhorrent from a copyright law perspective, this might have been a very clever move by Amazon. These rights holders who can't make money legitimately have been going around trying to make money by making extortionate threats. Amazon just removed that card from the Authors Guild's hand. I wonder how the authors -- who are supposed to be served by the Authors Guild -- feel about it. Kindle and Kindle 2 were 2 of the best things that have happened to authors; nice to alienate Amazon.
I wonder how many of the authors will now 'opt out' of the text-to-speech feature. I'm guessing: none.
Amazon showed this threat for what it was: extortion.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
It's like the iPod. All the Apple fanboys loved Steve for putting the DRM and vendor lock-in into a pretty velvet glove--and of coursed blamed it on the evil record companies. The Amazon fans are doing the same thing with the Kindle and the publishers. I personally would feel like a moron to pay nearly the same price as for a paper copy of a book (which I can resell, give away, or do whatever else I see fit with) as for a digital restrictions laden electronic copy tethered to one device.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Boo! Amazon was in a good position to fight this and knock some sense into the book industry before they follow the music industry in fighting their customers.
What to do with the book is the choice of the person who buys the book once it is published and released. If they want to read it aloud to their children, they can. If they want to use a magnifying lens to view it, they can. If they want to use the pages as toilet paper, they can. Copyright limits the ability to make copies in a *tangible* form, but even there the author and publisher's wishes are not absolute because of "fair use" and the doctrine of first sale.
Amazon should not have caved to this ridiculous request. The final choice is with consumers, who should refuse to buy any book that they can't run through text-to-speech or any other device that enables them to use their purchase. Or they should avoid a device that is intentionally hobbled for no good reason. It's a stupid and arbitrary limitation that has no basis in copyright law.
If authors and publishers want this level of control, then they shouldn't distribute the works under copyright terms. They should make the purchaser sign an extended license of some kind.
Obviously you care. After all, you bothered to read this thread.
This is fun. In my mind, instead of the value of titles with TTS enabled going UP, the value of those with it disabled went DOWN. Is this what the Writer's guild wanted? Lost sales? (Not that I was going to buy anything that can only be read on one device, from one manufacturer anyway, but still).
For me it's to expensive and I want the books for free to be interested.
But one can always whine on DRM even if one don't care for the device =P
Wil Wheaton has evaluated the Author Guild's claim and found it stupid. Other wise authors concur.
The Authors Guild acts more like you'd expect from a Book Publishers Guild, though I'm sure a large number of authors are on their side on this.
This really makes the choices obvious for authors, as well as for the dim-witted authors guild:
Either you:
a) Think you can profitably produce and market an audio book version of your work, or
b) Realize the audio book market for your work is too small to be profitable, and you'd be better off taking advantage of Kindle's no-cost-to-you TTS enhanced sales of your e-Book, or
c) Both of the above. The truth being that TTS is decades away from sounding anything like an emotive prosodic human reading, and that the market overlap between true human read audio books and robotic sounding TTS is miniscule.
***
As far as how TTS will improve, I can only see two long-term possibilities that will allow it to approach human quality:
1) It'll be based on a human-level AI where it can interpret the text as well as a human. It'll happen, but not for a long time.
2) An expert system approach, based partly on language/speech expertise, and partly on limited semantic analysis (e.g. based on something like Cyc) where plain text can be analyzed and marked up with prosody/voicing/emotional, etc, annotation to be interpreted by a suitable enhanced TTS engine. This doesn't need to be done in real-time - e-Books and other content could be offline processed into this enhanced form. This option wouldn't result in as nuanced a performance as a human one (because it'd be based on minimal understanding of the text), but it could be a major step up from the minimal prosodic/etc rules built into TTS engines today, and the current lack of emotional/voicing control. We're still talking years if not decades of research and development though.
This is very unfortunate development for the disabled, and aging community, among others challenged in other ways. The text-to-speech option opens up ready access to a wonderful array of information, documents, and literature to those individuals that are either not available or of limited availability. It is possible that the action is even a potential EEOC or ADA lawsuit material.
Does that not violate American with Disability Act?
How would this bode with things like the disability discrimination act if done over here in the UK (does the US have something equal to this?)
In the case of a blind user the text-to-speech may be their only option, and denying them that through an entirely artificial limitation may fall foul of the law.
Given the announcement about Amazon giving publishers control on whether text to speech will be enabled or not, does that mean that if you get one today that is already in stock that you will be able to get text to speech on everything in the future? In other words are the changes Amazon is making hardware changes or software changes (that will take effect when you update software)? Trying to see if I should rush out and get one since text to speech if valuable for me in the car Also, does anyone know if this works internationally -- e.g. France or only on the Sprint network in the US? If you dont have Sprint, can you use your wired computer to download stuff rather than wireless directly to Kindle? Thanks!
This will only result in hurting the disabled who rely on text-to-speech to enable them to read books and print publications.
Nobody in their right mind would want to listen to text-to-speech generated audio versus human-read books. I tried listening to a PDF once while in the car, and I couldn't stand it. I would have gladly paid for an audio-book of the same material. This would not have impacted their "business" as much as they thought.
What will happen now is that publishers will make their material inaccessible to the disabled because not every book is available in audio-book format.
Just shows you how far business goes to further greed instead of producing quality products, and being a part of a profession. Thumbs down to those in the author's guild. Very unprofessional IMHO.
I legally acquire some content, I have the right to do whatever I want with it for my personal consumption. I can use it to scare away crows, even if some "license" doesn't grant that "privilege".
Now, my rights do not force a manufacturer (or SW developer) to add features like a digital jack or an API, if the provider doesn't want to. But the copyright owner of the content does not have the right to stop that provider, if the provider wants to. And indeed the provider does not have the right to do additional work to close up an interface, just to deprive me of my right to use my content any way I want for myself.
Free expression is a right. Copyright is an exception, a deeply flawed compromise with our rights that is always in the wrong, even when it's tolerable and necessary. And even then, it is strictly limited solely to protect the minimum recouping of costs in producing content. Content that is otherwise profitable, even on a general basis (like per author, per series, per publisher, per genre, or per medium) should not enjoy profit subsidies from any copyright benefit. Because in that case, even the explicit basis for copyright limits on free expression does not apply, therefore copyright should not apply.
The info age that so threatens these copyright misers' excess profits is precisely what makes their base profits so reliable. The 1700s "realities" of commerce that made copyright the default, with exceptions to the exceptions allowing the fundamental free expression rights to survive, have totally changed in the 21st Century. According to the original Constitutional formula, "to promote progress in science and the useful arts" it's no longer necessary for everything to be copyrighted by default. Rather than vastly expand copyright extents and durations, the government's limited artificial monopolies should be cranked way down from the original formula. Copyright protections should be the exception, not the rule. Let content creators apply for copyright protection if they can prove they're especially threatened even in this golden age for content marketing. Let registered copyrights pay a tax on their revenues, with deductions for costs documented when first registering. After their revenue has doubled or tenfolded (as decided by Congress), or some limited time (like the original 14 years in which "pop" turns to "folk" in a generation) the copyright should expire, the Constitutional requirement for promotion for limited times having expired.
Let my Kindle play my content, and let me hack it if Amazon doesn't want to include a text speaker in the basic product. But don't replace my free speech with some inferior copyright privilege just because copyright misers are making less profit than they possibly could. That just encourages them.
--
make install -not war
It really makes me wonder if Amazon could fight this via something like the Americans with Disabilities Act. After all, should publishers get an extra kick-back just because a third party helps someone else to read a book they've already paid for?
Keep in mind that there are very distinct differences between text-to-speeching an actual book versus listening to an audio book. For example, can you specify an audio book to only play back a particular sentence from a particular paragraph on a particular page? Also, how does an audio book allow you to see content like photos or diagrams?
In short, it's very unlikely that anyone using this text-to-speech feature has any plans to buy an audio-book anyway. The only thing this text-to-speech function does is provide added value to a publishers end product.
8==8 Bones 8==8
You know, I am not a lawyer, but I wonder how the Americans with Disabilities Act could affect this in the end? Essentially, Amazon.com was offering a reasonable accommodation permitting any blind person to read any of the e-books that they sell. As I understand it, businesses are required to provide reasonable accommodations for disabled customers. At this point, the publishers are basically making an unreasonable insistence on reducing accessibility. I think it unlikely that they will be able to successfully block the feature.
After all, programs like JAWS already make many major applications and the web accessible. Imagine if web pages started blocking access to their websites for screen readers? It would be ridiculous, and this is too.
I imagine the boardroom discussion went something along the line of, "Hey, Vinnie! Dees m*th3rf@&!3r& at Amazon is selling da same as our audio books at book prices 'n cutting into our pie. Send the sharks on 'em!" All about "added value" one would think.
Amazon? I imagine they figure the blind have a national association that can make a big stink about this without Amazon wasting their own lawyer time.
This whole thing is silly.
When a computer program can compete with a talented human reader in converting text to audio, authors and publishers won't care about that problem at all.
On that day, a computer program will be able to WRITE the book, as well as perform it.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Sounds like a lot of work. I'd rather just buy the amazon.com book, and then download the pure text file off bittorent as a "backup" that I can conveniently play in my laptop or Iphone or Kindle.
Of course since you now HAVE to do this in order to have the Kindle TTS work it makes me wonder how many people will simple skip the amazon.com step. It seems to me that this is the usual result of DRM: customer is prevented from doing something reasonable, customer gets really irritated with the company, customer finds out they can stick it to the company by downloading from P2P, customer stops being a customer.
I can see this kind of actions running foul of the ADA. How are blind people going to have access to this technology?
Also in the works are actions against capchas not conforming to the ADA. Example, Microsoft has an audio capcha that people with hearing difficulties
can't solve. I know because I am far from deaf and was trying to download a hotfix. They have an audio capcha which I have difficulty solving. To make matters worse, they failed to offer alternatives. Of course this also applies to people with visual problems but many sites do not offer an alternative to visual capchas.
The Kindle2 supports direct access via USB and unprotected MOBI/PRC files, which are the most prolific of eBook formats. I've had my Kindle2 for narely a week, and it's got a lot of DRM-less material from my library and others. I have yet to purchase anything from Amazon in the way of books. (I do purchase from fictionwise sometimes, though. opensource tools like DeDRM and Calbre to strip the DRM from my books, and move between formats.)
I also own a BeBook/Hanlin V3 which also supports an number of formats. I prefer the Kindle for a lot of reasons.
This is another case of the American imaginary property ideology ruining technology for those that need it (those who cannot see). I will be informing everyone I know about Amazon's willingness to betray hardware owners to protect the content cartel. I would like to see a lawsuit when someone sees "text-to-speech" on the Kindle 2 feature list, but it fails to provide this functionality with book X or Y. I have half a mind to close my Amazon.com account and shop somewhere else because of this cave. Way to shaft your customers, buys!
Wait till Amazon offers the Kindle Android Fembot. And then the lawyers put restrictions on it.
Then maybe people like you will come to understand why these issues matter. Or, maybe I should rephrase that...
I hope they make sure everyone knows which publishers request this. If a publisher wants to make their works difficult to access, I'm perfectly happy to oblige by avoiding them completely - there are plenty of other ways to waste time. And errr.. what business are they in?
'course NOT selling your product is a good way to get no money, but that's their lookout.
If they don't want to sell because they want to keep control, don't sell it.
And get bugger all for it.
I hear ya! Those iPods. I really wish they could play something other then iTunes DRM files. Every other MP3 player plays, well, MP3s, and we all know you can't put DRM on those! Or even if I could take a cd I own and put it into the iPod format so I could listen to it on the iPod and not have to buy it again from them. Mean ol' Steve making me buy the White album again. If only I'd have known that I'd have to buy everything I wanted to listen to from iTunes.
Maybe someday someone will figure out how to get other files onto a Kindle so you don't have to buy everything from Amazon...
Best explanation of DRM ever.
Copyright was never meant to address usability. To the extent laws like the DMCA support DRM, they are manufacturing Constitutional law out of whole cloth.
I hope that every author who actually does allow disabling of TTS gets a nasty letter from every Kindle owner who bought his book.
I also hope that Amazon clearly marks in VERY LARGE RED LETTERS each Kindle book that has this feature disabled, along with the author's contact information.
Most of all I hope for a quick crack to this NO_TTS flag. Or can you avoid it by not updating your Kindle firmware?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
...and in some countries, "fair use" is not provided for in any case. For instance, it is still illegal here in Australia to copy the contents of a legitimately bought CD which you have to your iPod, even though you will not be listening to your iPod and your CD player at the same time, thus satisfying the provisions of the original licence.
This legislation should be easy to fix. Trouble is, the greed of the copyright holders is less easy to deal with.
Okay, smart-ass: what are you going to do with your DRM-less AAC files that you paid extra for if you decide to switch from an iPod to a less encumbered device? How are you going to get your MP3 files onto the iPod without iTunes (note that Apple has made DMCA claims for their database format? I don't know, because I won't buy a locked-down device in the first place. But you can shove your ignorant sarcasm right up your ass.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Just as USAIR learned that splattering charges across the flight experience is short sighted - e.g. they reversed the decision to charge $2 for soda - DRM presents the same opportunity for use of media.
If the Authors' Guild thinks TTS readings should be a separable right in order to nickle and dime readers, perhaps they should consider charging for reading aloud in person. I've read hundreds if not thousands of stories to my kids - perhaps they should seize the opportunity for $1 / chapter to read to your kids.
The text-to-speech is a selling feature of the kindle 2 for me. Now I don't know if I can buy one. The TTS is a matter of access to print material for many people. I prefer TTS to audio books because you can speed up TTS with little or no loss of quality.
I just wish Amazon would stick up for the rights of people with print disabilities and help "us" compel publishers to allow for equal and free access to print.
I also support the idea of labeling these books TTS-Locked. The consumer has the right to know if the book they are buying will be accessible to them or not. Maybe then the guild and others will realize that preventing people with disabilities from accessing their material isn't protecting their interest its discrimination and a violation of our civil rights.
You are (well, probably aren't, but you'll get the benefit of the doubt) aware that AAC isn't Apple Audio Codec, it is Advanced Audio Codec, part of MPEG-4? Outside of the world of LAME fanatics AAC blows MP3 away for quality at any given bitrate. Any decent device should be capable of playing AAC.
Also, iTunes can refer to both the program (which some people have a blind hatred of) and the storefront (which the same people who have a blind hatred of the program also hate). Some people don't need crappy third party skins or the latest stoner-ific visualizer and find iTunes the program and storefront serviceable.
The following is more a question to prompt discussion than an answer: without paper, what is the publisher publishing? Do they still get the same % cut? Are they attempting to reduce Kindle's attractiveness because they know in the end, without paper, authors like Stephen King and other popular (and not so popular authors) can self-publish, removing the publishers from the picture entirely? It seems to me that once you eliminate the paper, the publisher's value-add (and power) is significantly reduced.
Darn, I was about to buy one but that is a load. I have a kid who is handicapped and could use the text to speech. Guess I'll just keep getting books for free from the library. I just don't believe the idiots.
I believe what will ultimately happen is that they'll have two tiers of Kindle books - one with audio disabled, at the current price; and one with audio enabled, which will cost more. Amazon wins because they generate more profit; and the Author's Guild wins because they can claim they're working for their constituency. In the end, it's only you and me that gets the shaft.
So can I return my Kindle 2 that I bought because of text to speech now that it's been crippled?
The only reason to upgrade from a K1 to a K2 is the text to speech. The lack of an SD slot in the K2 is a real step backwards.
When I looked at the replies to my post, I suddenly understood that talking about a robotic finger just threw everyone off. How many pages does the average ebook have, anyway? How much work could it be to press the button yourself? Even if you're reading the 870 page "Order of the Phoenix", you wouldn't need to break the DRM all in one sitting, anyway. And even at 2 seconds per page (based on a very slow refresh for the epaper, even current electrophoretic technology is supposed to be able to attain 4x that) that would only be a total of 29 minutes of pressing the button, spread over as many sittings as you wish.
I agree that you are correct that DRM isn't about absolute security (I know well that there's no such beast). However, if the person is willing to press the button himself (or pay his children to do it, perhaps?), then my scheme merely requires software to drive the camera and perhaps do OCR, and that can be distributed over the internet.
But you could still press the button yourself! (Or pay your kids to do it.) Interesting how this simple idea has been overlooked by all the people replying to my post.
In other words, if book publishers are hoping that moving away from paper will enable them to implement DRM, they're just as stupid as the music and movie industry.
Text to speech is of such a poor quality compared to an audio book, that one wonders why people are concerned. TTS can be reasonably well understood, but it does not understand the text, and because of this will never be able to produce a quality that even remotely matches a well spoken audio book. TTS is simply unable to carry any emotion.
On the other hand, the Kindle would open up the possibility to sell book / audio book bundles, with the improved copy protection a closed system can provide. The main issue would be the larger downloads required (50 to 500 MByte for a book, depending on size and quality of encoding), but this can be easily hidden, as you can stream the start of the download.
Because, you know, they all have money falling out of their ass to spend on audio books.
Isn't this the great Slashdot disconnect? Everyone moans that musicians should give away their music and "earn a living like the rest of us" by performing. Yet, here we are griping that the performance of a work of text should not be protected either. So authors only get money from the sale of text and musicians only get money from performing? Or is it that the book is the performance? If that is so, should we outlaw libraries? I have to admit I come down on the author's side of this.
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
So is a Macintosh computer, which has a built in screen reader which anyone can activate a "specialized device" that are "available only by prescription to people with a qualifying disability"? No of course not. Yet it has text to speech able to read books or anything else for that matter.
As I read the statute, PDF is not a "specialized format". If a PDF file is encrypted and its access control section has "read aloud" turned off, and a PDF reader passes the text of the PDF to NSAccessibility, the PDF reader becomes a circumvention device distributed in violation of the DMCA.
The makers of talking book players are happy to sell the devices to anyone who wants one, disabled or not.
Sure, you can buy the Digital Talking Book player. But you can't activate your device without the NLS authorization number, and you can't get one of those without an examination by a "competent authority".
So am I in violation if I read my child a bedtime story from the kindle, or for that matter from any book?
N/T
some people buy operating systems when there are perfectly good operating systems available for free.
The OS they buy, can play games. Just treat it like an expense, like a PS2 or X-Box console, but with an additional advantage: it's not locked to hardware from any specific manufacturer.
But then, you knew these already.
So what do I know?
A lot more than me. 20 people reply to your comment. Nobody replies to mine.
I am well aware that AAC isn't technically Apple proprietary, but it's also not terribly supported in portable players other than the iPod. So you can see why people might think it is an Apple "innovation." It's a nice way for Apple to be able to say they use open standards while locking people into their walled garden. Not all devices are capable of playing AAC because, surprise, it requires another license fee to the MPEG group for the codec--and why should device manufacturers pay to support it (in addition to paying Frauenhofer to use the ubiquitious MP3 format) when it's not only patent encumbered but not the dominant format? I couldn't help noticing that you glossed over Apple's efforts to use the DMCA bludgeon to keep the iPod from working with anything save the iTunes (store and software) walled garden.
It's fine that you don't care if you use a locked down product, don't need "the latest stoner-ific visualizer" (and what is wrong with wanting that?) and are willing to support DRM in it's many-headed forms. With a nod to Samuel Adams, go from us in peace, may your digital chains sit lightly upon you.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
This should be illegal.
It is discrimination towards deaf people or people with dyslexia.
This is scarily much like the short story 'The Right to Read' by Richard Stallman.
* http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
... is gay anyway. Until a Morgan Freeman engine is developed it will never live up to the story experience from a well voiced audio book.
I've just let Amazon know that I will no longer be considering a Kindle 2. I'm sure they will care alot, but... :p
THe customers are able to tell facebook what the terms will be. Will we ever see the same here? Now is the time to show all these people who's boss here. Do not buy crippled hardware!
What?
Where to begin?
First, nice question-begging there. GP's whole point was that the iPod ( / Kindle) isn't "encumbered" because it supports standard non-DRM formats. So saying that he's wrong because he can't switch to a "less encumbered" device doesn't make any sense unless you actually give some reason to think the iPod is particularly encumbered compared to other players.
Second, people (such as yourself) who are exaggeratedly upset over DRMed AAC files even after the DRM has now been removed from the store don't actually have to "pay extra" -- since in your outrage you doubtless boycotted the DRMed files, and since the non-DRM files by and large cost the same amount as before, you will be buying music for the first time without any extra cost.
Third, "How are you going to get your MP3 files onto the iPod without iTunes"... I guess you have a moderate point there, but I'm not sure why you think it's so important. Lots of consumer devices require that you use their software to operate them, and while that might be annoying if you have particularly strong feelings about what program you use to copy music to your player, you don't have to actually use iTunes in any other context, so I don't see how this is some huge "lock-down".
Geez, if only he could be as rational and well-mannered as you...
Of course, some things will always be free...
I am the man with no sig!
I had to laugh and cry when this story broke. The benighted members of the Authors Guild are either ignorant of - or have conveniently forgotten - that in the early days of the novel, public reading was the norm: private reading was for those fortunate enough to be able to read. The widespread popularity and renown of our most famous novelists grew from oral dissemination. Charles Dickens himself was famous for his dramatic and emotional renderings of his masterpieces in packed public reading events. Shame on the so-called, self-styled 'Authors Guild'. They are the true inheritors of Grub Street.
Go fuck yourself. How's that for well-mannered?
The iPod is encumbered because of its database format, reverse engineering of which has resulted in DMCA threats from Apple. Whether I'm well-mannered or not doesn't change the facts. And people who post sarcastic replies piss me off
There a decent middle ground between not saying anything and being insulting. It's a polite correction, as in:
"Just in case that wasn't a typo, the correct way to spell that is...."
Anything else is just being a self-righteous dick.
Given the announcement about Amazon giving publishers control on whether text to speech will be enabled or not, does that mean that if you get one today that is already in stock that you will be able to get text to speech on everything in the future? In other words are the changes Amazon is making hardware changes or software changes (that will take effect when you update software)? Trying to see if I should rush out and get one since text to speech if valuable for me in the car Also, does anyone know if this works internationally -- e.g. France or only on the Sprint network in the US? If you dont have Sprint, can you use your wired computer to download stuff rather than wireless directly to Kindle? Thanks!
They're concerned about TTS competing with audiobooks? Are they smoking crazy weed or has it really improved that much?
Uhm, you could try, maybe, reading it to them.
AC (#27024063) and numerous other posters suggested boycotting authors who request that their works be put on Kindle's TTS blacklist. If I buy a child a book to read to himself, I'm breaking the boycott because the author still earns a royalty. I was trying to gauge how much effort would be reasonable in such a boycott.
The Kindle reader doesn't make a copy of the book, it just reads the book using text to speech. It reads it in real time, it doesn't generate a sound file of the whole book as a recording.
If it's illegal to have my computer read a book to me because it violates copyright, is it illegal for my girlfriend to read a book to me? Does it violate copyright if someone reads a children's book out loud to a child? If so, the rights holders to Dr. Suess can sue half the parents in the US. If I'm alone in a room, with no audience, is it illegal for me to read the book out loud to myself? What's the legal difference between me alone in a room reading a book out loud to myself off of the computer screen, and me alone in a room with the computer reading the book out loud to me?
If you made a recording of the kindle reader reading a book and distributed it, it would be illegal, just like making a recording of yourself reading the book and distributing it would be illegal, because those are both unlicensed copies of the book. A text-to-speech program does not contain any copy of any copyrighted work, so how does it violate copyright?
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
I hope not, a Kindle2 would be very useful for learning english as a new language
Products designed for "a reading age of about 5 years old" serve the beginners' end of this niche. And once the ESL student has outgrown LeapPad, he can use a Kindle 2 with works published before 1923, none of which will be on Kindle 2's TTS blacklist.
listening while driving
Traditional audio books serve this niche.
This is odd. My wife has an ipod classic (inherited from a family member who didn't want it), and it seems to work fine with the mp3s that amarok puts onto it. In contrast, it won't work with the itunes on our old mac...
IANAL, but it seems to me that someone who purchased a Kindle2 prior to this announcement with the expectation that it would TTS everything would be able to sue. Or at least publicly demand a refund for their Kindle2, all titles purchased, and any shipping they paid for. (A refund I imagine Amazon would not normally allow).
I agree that the right way to fight this is not to buy DRM products, and I know several people not buying a Kindle just for it's DRM issues.
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The Kindle is virtually unusable by blind people. There is a little tiny keyboard with no tactile feedback and nothing raised to indicate where you are on it. The buttons on the sides are very difficult to discern by touch.
You wouldn't buy a Kindle if you were blind, you would get something else that would probably be free. And all the books would be free also.
This has nothing to do with people with real disabilities. And the TTS reading is very good with the male voice. The female isn't as good but. I would say it is 75% of the quality of a "professionally made" audio book from Audible that I bought and downloaded. This has (had?) all of the earmarks of utterly wiping out a chunk of the audio book market, completely and overnight.
I can see Kindle recordings being passed around as audio books. Somewhat time consuming to make, but very easy and it is difficult to sue the Kindle.