There’s a fascinating post up on the Small Beer Press web site about the new Kindle. The machine has text-to-voice capability, allowing it to “read” a book to you (presumably in a robotic voice). But audiobooks are a separate market with separate rights, and Kindle editions don’t have those rights? So isn’t the Kindle illegally infringing on the audiobook market? Not so, says Amazon:
The ability to read text aloud is very different from producing an audio version of a written work, so audio distribution rights are not required for any titles currently available as eBooks in the Kindle store.
Oh, I can see a few lawyers making a pretty penny out of that.
I expect Amazon’s argument will hold up, in that the Kindle doesn’t produce audiobooks anymore than a Kurzweil reading device produces audiobooks, and those have existed for over 3 decades without any challenge.
The only difference is that the Kindle will, of course, get a lot more market penetration and not just be used by people with visual impairments or reading problems (and big grants to pay for expensive assistive equipment).
Andy:
I expect the argument to be won by whoever has the best lawyers and lobbyists: Jeff Bezos or Rupert Murdoch.
The problem, here, is that the (a) Kindle also plays audio books, (b) Amazon sells audio books and (c) Aiken is completely right: the audio version of a book is the same kind of derivative work as, say, a movie version. Amazon could well be found to be infringing, here, and that would actually make sense. They may have better lawyers than the Author’s Guild and prevail, but…uh…that’s not really a win for me or you or anybody else reading this blog, I’d imagine. Unless they’ve got Amazon stock.
That doesn’t apply to, say, smart phones or computers, because smart phones and computers aren’t devices built solely to sell e-books and audio books.
I don’t see how a specific reading device being able to read any text on it aloud in a synthesized voice is different from a computer doing the same (a feature built in in the Apple OS, for example, and no lawsuits that I know of). But of course I’m not a lawyer (and even if I were, would not know US law).
This must already have been addressed when people started selling e-books as PDFs. I don’t know if text-to-speech is one of the flags you can set when locking down a PDF, but I do know Adobe Reader is happy to read aloud the crappy network-enabled-DRM-encumbered copy of Smilla’s Sense of Snow I bought from Fictionwise three and a half years ago.
And I don’t think any sensible judge would say that any text-to-speech system I’ve heard seriously affects the commercial value a professionally read and produced audiobook, after listening to the two one after the other.
(Undoubtedly people in the SFWA forums will claim this is only a matter of technological progress, but unless “progress” includes introducing a vast array of new punctuation to clearly indicate and disambiguate tone of voice, volume, accent, emphasis and for that matter who’s actually delivering which line of dialogue, those people are wrong.)
Sorry the Kindle computer voice would never replace Neil Gaiman. 😀
I’ll still be Well Read Audio Books any day.
Oops,, make that – I’ll still Buy Well Read Audio Books any day.