[stylist] kindle

[LoriStay at aol.com]

The problem here is that Kindle allowed text to speech, and got the 
Author's guild upset.   But the Author's guild claimed that having material read 
aloud violated copyright, and that it had never been done before, both claims 
being patently false.   Amazon just went along with the Author's guild, 
saying they would block text to speech on Kindle if an author wanted it.   What 
this does is to block blind people from reading the books, and will limit 
sales to the blind.   In the meantime, there is no law against hard covers 
being read aloud to people in their own homes.   After all, they've either 
bought the book or taken it out of the library.   So why should the Author's 
guild object?   In a sense, they are discriminating against those who read by 
ear, namely the blind and dyslexic, and those who are functionally 
illiterate.
Lori
In a message dated 4/22/09 11:38:07 PM, uinen at earthlink.net writes:


> 
> 
> Though I am not an author whose work is affected by amazon.com's Kindle, 
> it seems to me that the text to speech issue is one to be raised with 
> amazon.com, which has little if anything to do with authors. In fact, I 
> understand that amazon.com puts books on Kindle without permission from 
> authors/publishers and without appropriate compensation. While it is true that Kindle 
> needs to be made accessible to screen readers and other text to speech 
> devices, the more important question is that of fairness to authors. Kindle is 
> not a wonderful new way to read as long as it cheats authors out of rights 
> and royalties. It is my understanding that this is exactly what it does at 
> present. As such, it is not something that should be embraced by the print 
> disabled community or anyone else until the unfair practices associated with 
> it are resolved.
> 
> Solidarity and Peace,
> Kerry
> 
> 




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