Hey, it is a copyright debate! Does Cory Doctorow have something to say? Of course he does. Here he is talking to GalleyCat about how he doesn’t want readers to think that authors are out to rip them off the way they the music industry is.
Update: And Neil Gaiman gives his view on the issue here. Neil’s point is very similar to one I saw made by, I think, Ron Hogan in his tweets from TOC. If publishers were like the music industry they’d want to make it illegal to read a book to your kid because that would infringe their audiobook copyright. On the other hand, Neil’s agent is only trying to safeguard his income, which is her job.
Hmmm. I was going to comment before (I guess I’m a bit like Cory, except much less American, and nicer to strangers, and I *like* paper books), but…
The Kindle performs the same task as a person reading a book aloud. The audio is not a recording, it’s generated on-the-fly.
If a person reading a book aloud is violating Copyright in a work (and in some cases it is), then the Kindle doing the same, does the same.
But I agree with your last point from before — in the end, it will probably come down to who has the highest-paid lawyers.