Forum Moderators: not2easy
Was your mother a lawbreaker when she read you The Little Prince or Green Eggs and Ham?That's the question raised Tuesday by the Authors Guild, an advocacy group for writers. Paul Aitken, the group's executive director objects to the text-to-speech feature on Amazon's Kindle 2 digital-book reader. Aitken told The Wall Street Journal: "They don't have the right to read a book out loud. That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law."
Wow. If a computer can't lawfully read a book out loud, do human beings have the right? Amazon and Aitken could not be reached for comment.
FarmBoy
Individuals clearly do not need to be concerned. A person reading a book out loud to a child and purchasing an audio file--or, as in this case, a file that can be both read onscreen and listened to--are very different things. So are reading a book out loud to a child and reading it out loud to a paying audience, for that matter (public performance, as mentioned in the article).
It's simply the case that people who buy books have traditionally been allowed under copyright law to do certain things with them, and that includes reading them themselves, loaning them to others, selling them to others, and reading them out loud in family and similar settings.
What Amazon is doing is not an audio book, true. It's a file with dual capabilities. As such this is also arguably different from the text-to-speech feature found on many computers. They're selling it as a part of any Kindle book purchased and used on the new Reader....
I suspect that the agreement that Amazon made with publishers specifies just what rights they acquire from publishers, and that those rights do NOT include audio rights. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
(The title of this thread (and of the article it links to) is misleading--the Author's Guild represents individual authors, not publishers.)
Authors are called "publishers" in Amazon's Kindle program.
I think Amazon should just offer these individual publishers the option of having their book removed from the Kindle bookstore or keeping it there with the understanding the voice feature will be available to customers. My guess is most would choose the latter.
FarmBoy
The debate could be academic. If the book publishers don't like the feature, they can refuse to renew their licenses with Amazon in the future. And my colleague Ina Fried raised another point. Why would Kindle owners choose a computer voice when they can hear a recording of the author or a professional actor reading the book?
In some ways this whole thing reminds me of the 1942 musician's strike in the USA. Luddite musicians were protesting against the phonograph because they perceived it would curtail public demand for live music at venues and thus impact negatively on their livelihood!
Syzygy
