My position on the Kindle 2 Text-to-Speech concern
Personally, I agree with Amazon's position that TTS is perfectly legal, infringes no copyrights, and poses no threat to the sales of audiobooks to those who are otherwise inclined to buy them. I am a frequent consumer of audiobooks, and have no intention of stopping just because I can have a monotonous, inflection-free robot read any e-boos I've had added to my Kindle. Truly, one cannot be a replacement for the other.
However, my issue with the debate is not so simple as just an belief that the Authors' Guild has no rational basis. What disgusts me so much about the manufactured “controversy” over the Text-to-Speech functionality is that the information about it has been available for months, but the Authors' Guild decided to completely ignore the issue until the day the Kindle 2 started shipping. THEN they started making a big stink about it. If they’d expressed concerns when the announcements about Kindle 2 features were first made, they could have come to an agreement with Amazon before the official release without the whole uproar. After all, the AG had a good 2 weeks between the time of Bezos’ official announcement and they started going out.
I think the AG decided if they waited until release day to say anything, then took the extreme measures they did (including the NY Times editorial piece), they’d get the most publicity possible for the existence of professionally-recorded Audiobooks to a broader audience, and the effect on Amazon’s reputation and our satisfaction with them over this be damned.
Well played, Mr. Blount! Congratulations on the selfish, unprofessional handling of the situation, ensuring that much more bad blood against your organization from the general public. You’ve successfully made it that much harder for us to sympathize with your positions and advocacy, and given yourself that much more work to do in order to be taken seriously over any future issues you raise!
However, my issue with the debate is not so simple as just an belief that the Authors' Guild has no rational basis. What disgusts me so much about the manufactured “controversy” over the Text-to-Speech functionality is that the information about it has been available for months, but the Authors' Guild decided to completely ignore the issue until the day the Kindle 2 started shipping. THEN they started making a big stink about it. If they’d expressed concerns when the announcements about Kindle 2 features were first made, they could have come to an agreement with Amazon before the official release without the whole uproar. After all, the AG had a good 2 weeks between the time of Bezos’ official announcement and they started going out.
I think the AG decided if they waited until release day to say anything, then took the extreme measures they did (including the NY Times editorial piece), they’d get the most publicity possible for the existence of professionally-recorded Audiobooks to a broader audience, and the effect on Amazon’s reputation and our satisfaction with them over this be damned.
Well played, Mr. Blount! Congratulations on the selfish, unprofessional handling of the situation, ensuring that much more bad blood against your organization from the general public. You’ve successfully made it that much harder for us to sympathize with your positions and advocacy, and given yourself that much more work to do in order to be taken seriously over any future issues you raise!