Rather than argue with the Authors Guild over the text-to-speech feature of its new Kindle 2 e-book reader, Amazon is modifying the device’s software to make it optional. Authors and publishers will now be able to decide if they want the function enabled or not on titles for which they own the rights.
The idea of derivative rights and royalties for text-to-speech “audiobooks” like those provided by Amazon’s Kindle 2 might seem ludicrous now, but will that be the case in a few years when the device’s grating text-to-speech voice has been inevitably humanized? A reasonable question, and one that Roy Blount Jr., president of the Authors Guild, poses in an Op Ed in the New York Times today.
The Authors Guild, a trade group that once maligned Amazon for its ”notorious used-book service,” is at it again–this time taking issue with the text-to-speech feature of the retailer’s new Kindle 2 e-book reader. Seems it feels the device oversteps its bounds by creating rudimentary audiobooks for which it doesn’t own the rights. But as author Neil Gaiman notes, the idea of derivative rights and royalties for text-to-speech just seems silly.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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