[Electronics-talk] Amazon.com Caves In!

[Baracco, Andrew W]

Amazon.com Caves in to Authors' Guild
Amazon.com caved in.
Amazon revealed last night that the text-to-speech feature they built
into the Kindle
2 will now be optional for publishers.
So, it will be up to the author and his or her publisher whether or not
a Kindle user can take advantage of a convenient feature which would
have allowed a reader to listen to robotic-sounding voices reading
either all or part of a book aloud.
The Authors' guild had maintained that the text-to-speech capability
effectively turned the Kindle into an audio book player.
Although I, as a frequent user of text-to-speech engines on my
computer's screen reader, my talking alarm clock, and my accessible MP3
player, think theirs is a ludicrous claim, Amazon apparently decided
that providing this convenience to its Kindle users was not worth the
hassle or the potential legal action the guild was implicitly
threatening, and they caved in.
What a shame!  And what a misunderstanding on behalf of writers and
publishers!
Really, can anyone compare the robotic sounding voices of a
text-to-speech engine to the dulcet tones of a human being reading
aloud, conveying emotion, offering pauses pregnant with meaning, and
pronouncing words correctly? Read More Here:
<http://community.gettinghired.com/blogs/pennyforyourthoughts/archive/20
09/03/01/amazon-com-caves-in-to-authors-guild.aspx
http://community.gettinghired.com/blogs/pennyforyourthoughts/archive/200
9/03/01/amazon-com-caves-in-to-authors-guild.aspx