Authors Guild turns up heat on Kindle 2's "Text to Speech" |
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Authors Guild turns up heat on Kindle 2's "Text to Speech"
When Amazon unveiled Kindle 2, its new electronic book reader, the Authors Guild was quick to critize the device's new Text to Speech feature, which reads e-books aloud, arguing that it could undermine the lucrative market for audiobooks. Now the Guild has fired another shot across the bow with a New York Times op-ed piece titled "The Kindle Swindle?"
Guild President Roy Blount Jr. argues in the piece:
True, you can already get software that will read aloud whatever is on your computer. But Kindle 2 is being sold specifically as a new, improved, multimedia version of books — every title is an e-book and an audio book rolled into one. And whereas e-books have yet to win mainstream enthusiasm, audio books are a billion-dollar market, and growing. Audio rights are not generally packaged with e-book rights. They are more valuable than e-book rights. Income from audio books helps not inconsiderably to keep authors, and publishers, afloat.
Blount says while at first blush it may seem like "no automated read-aloud function can compete with the dulcet resonance of Jim Dale reading 'Harry Potter,'" the male and female voices on Kindle 2 are "quite listenable" and notes that text to speech technology is improving with companies like IBM working on it. Authors, he concludes, have "a right to a fair share of the value that audio adds to Kindle 2’s version of books."
Blount, an author and humorist, notes that the guild's copyright stance on Kindle 2's Text to Speech has met with criticism from the National Federation of the Blind and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He says the guild isn't against audio technologies for the blind or bedtime reading to children, but argues that Amazon shouldn't pass Kindle 2 audio on to everyone without "copyright-holders' participation."
To hear Kindle 2's automated voice feature, check out our recent demo of the device.
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