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Last month, the Author’s Guild threatened Amazon over the Kindle 2’s ability to read books aloud.  They claimed that the text-to-speech feature violated copyrights on audiobooks, and went so far as to call the feature “a new format of an audiobook”.

Even though text-to-speech has been around for well over a decade.

Now the deal is that Amazon is giving publishers the the right to decide if their kindle books will allow text-to-speech or not.  And that apparently includes Kindle books that are in the public domain.

I want to address something here.

The Author’s Guild made noise about this issue because they were afraid that this feature would threaten revenue from audiobooks.  I say that if indeed an electronic voice can sell better than a professional reader, audiobooks are done for, and we need not worry.

Either way, this situation is shining a bright light on a broader issue.  That is, the simple fact that these “representatives” of rights holders have much too much power in deciding what consumers can and cannot do with their own property.

On a side note, the Entertainment Software Association is a good example of a “representative” mafia that needs to be abolished.

In yet another ridiculous case of people caring about things that don’t matter, the Authors Guild is making the claim that a new text-to-speech feature in Amazon’s Kindle 2 violates audiobook copyrights.

Paul Aiken, exo of the Authors Guild:

“They don’t have the right to read a book out loud, that’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”

yes, he actually said that.

If Amazon were bundling the audiobook with the written copy, and not handing out the royalties, then I’d understand. But there is a huge difference between an audiobook and a text-to-speech reading of a book. the text-to-speech on the Kindle 2 is an electronic voice, like MacinTalk or Microsoft Sam, not Morgan Freeman sitting in a recording studio with a bag full of cough drops.

another did-he-really-just-say-that remark from Aiken:

“They [e-books and audio books] are derivative works of a book and fall under the copyright, this [the text to speech capability] is a new format of an audio book.”

The Kindle’s text-to-speech feature is not a recording of any book, it is a library of code, referenced by a complex algorithm that sounds out words, then transmits the sounds electronically to the built in speaker. Nothing is ever recorded on a non-volatile basis.

Neil Gaimen [citation not necessary] had something to say as well:

“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.”