Kindle Text to Speech

[jimhines]

peachtess asked what I thought about the Kindle2 Text to Speech drama. In brief, Amazon's Kindle 2 includes the ability to read a document out loud. The Authors Guild states that this falls under audio rights, and is therefore s a contractual violation, since audio rights are separate from electronic (e-book) rights. Amazon has since backed down.I don't

Comments

[sistercoyote]

I can ask my Mac to read things to me, if I want (I don't, generally). Is that an infringement?

Also, Wil Wheaton recorded himself and the Kindle reading part of his new book (just so you know what the Kindle sounds like. Oddly, I don't, because I haven't listened to it yet).

[sistercoyote]

My Mac reads to me, too. If the Kindle 2 sounds anything like my Mac, it is a flat, emotionless voice that doesn't pronounce every word right (really, deluge is a real word and there's no reason for deli-uge), and is actually very boring to listen to.

*shrug*

[jimhines]

My GPS is fun to listen to, just because it's so entertaining to hear how it struggles with certain street names.

I'm told that gets especially fun when you're driving around Hawaii.

[sistercoyote]

I would imagine there are certain areas in Los Angeles (CaHUEnga, TaHUNga, and Van Ness [Cahuenga, Tujunga, and Van Nuys]) that would be pretty entertaining, too.

[sistercoyote]

I always love getting email notification from LJ on an anonymous comment:

"Someone has replied to your comment."

I don't know why this amuses me, but it does.

[jimhines]

"I can ask my Mac to read things to me, if I want (I don't, generally). Is that an infringement?"

Technically speaking? I don't know. I wouldn't think of it as such, but I'd have to do a very close reading of the contracts involved, the rights being licensed, and so on to say for certain.

It's not something I'd spend any time worrying about, myself...

[sistercoyote]

Fair enough - it just crossed my mind to wonder.

Of course, my Mac usually only reads to me when I accidentally press the wrong combination of buttons and then spend five minutes trying to figure out how to make the annoying voice go away, but.

[jimhines]

It's a good question. As I understand it, that tool on a PC or Mac is specifically designed as an accessibility tool. I think the Kindle function was supposed to be marketed as more. But if the end result is the same, is there any difference legally?

I don't know, and this is one of the reasons I became a writer instead of a lawyer or an agent :-)

[shekkara]

Technically speaking, text to speech isn't creating a new copy of your work, so rights and contracts probably haven't been violated. It reads an existing text document out loud. The speech is not preserved as it's own recording; only the text remains, which the listener has paid for. Whether they read it on the Kindle or listen to TTS, either way your reader has paid for a copy of the book.

Will current TTS technology hurt sales of separately produced audio performances of books? I suspect people who truly appreciate audio books will still want a real reading.