New Kindle Audio Feature Causes a Stir
Some publishers and agents expressed concern over a new, experimental feature that reads text aloud with a computer-generated voice.
“They don’t have the right to read a book out loud,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. “That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”
Impressive claim. Does the Authors Guild claim that when I read a book to my toddler I’m infringing on their rights?
The good news is, when the lynching begins, the scum-sucking bastards, their shysters, and their bitches will have plenty of company.
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Hmmm. I have to confess I didn’t even think of this, but they probably have a point. Audio rights have traditionally been sold separately from other rights, and there is a thriving audio book business.
Not that I am opposed to amazon’s book-reading capability. There is nothing new about that, and if people wanted their books read to them by computer, there have been ways of doing that for quite some time.
I continue to be amused and amazed at the unintended and/or unforeseen consequences of technological advance, though, and I suspect that it is the unintended/unforeseen consequence part that will make the Singularity so hard to encompass unless you are experiencing it as it happens - and maybe even then.
Sooner or later a blind person will want a portable bookreader like the Kindle and sue the Authors Guild under the ADA. Of course, as with all this kind of thing, the only real winners will be the lawyers.
I think they would probably lose, since alternatives exist for them already. The law guarantees access - but I don’t think it guarantees access on any particular platform.
One might compose a defense regarding the relative quality of machine-read text and human-read text. Is the Kindle 2’s reading anywhere near as expressive as a human’s? If not, then the audiobook business is not in trouble. Once it starts getting close, though, then there’s going to be an issue.
The quality is a lot better than it used to be. A few years back, I looked into publishing an audio version of Inner Circles. It wasn’t half bad then, but still not really up to snuff. I haven’t looked into it lately, but I’d be surprised if there haven’t been improvements. In fact, if Kindle is touting this feature, there must have been.
Wrong. Copyright law allows control over an audio version of the book. Control over someone reading the thing out loud is not included—especially when the reading does not generate income. Aiken is gaming the law here.