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."
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.
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?
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.
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.
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. Ya know, there are several organizations that read books to the blind, and release them as audio. Like this one: http://www.readingsfortheblind.org/ - I wonder why the Authors' Guild doesn't complain about them?
Perhaps amazon ought to re-package their marketing. Instead of calling it "text to speech", call the Kindle "handicap accessible" and "reads aloud to our blind patrons". Then it would make the Authors' Guild President look like a dick. "He wants to stop blind people from enjoying books? What an ___."
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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.
I stopped reading you when you started redefining concepts.
Here in slashdot some of us are somewhat literate.
Copyright is not property, it's a distribution monopoly usually backed by a government.
Your view on the "essence" of copyright infringement is very far from mine, and from what I remember as usual from the pre-digital age.
I think the main problem is that copyright is such a difficult concept to grasp, that using analogies is always misleading (lying, I mean).
When intellectual works are released to the public, the same laws than assign copyright to the publisher, also give the ownership to the public domain.
So, you could not steal from the author something he does not own. Of course you can't steal a book from the public domain, because once you copy it, the public domain doesn't cease to have it, either, but that's another thing.
When you hear the words "stealing" or "theft", dealing with copyrights, usually it means someone is lying to you. You might be able to steal a copyright, but that would involve registering other people's work as yours, and you would be stealing the distribution monopoly, not the actual content. You can't steal intellectual works themselves.