[nfb-talk] The Kindle Swindle

[Brian Miller]

How in the world can the Writer's Guilde make the case that a syntehsized
speech program constitutes a performance that would in essence require a
mechanical reproduction lisence to play?  

This is really taking royalty protection to an absurd level.  One should pay
for the access to the content, not the format of that content.  Is this
really any different than someone taking a written copy and reading it
aloud?  

Brian M


-----Original Message-----
From: nfb-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfb-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Michael Bullis
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2009 6:18 AM
To: 'NFB Talk Mailing List'
Subject: [nfb-talk] The Kindle Swindle

This from today's New York Times.
Mike Bullis

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR. The Kindle Swindle?. 
 
By ROY BLOUNT Jr.. Roy Blount Jr. is the author, most recently, of 'Alphabet
Juice. BEING president of too many well-meaning organizations put my father
into an early grave. The lesson in this was not lost on me. But now I am
president of the Authors Guild, whose mission is to sustain book-writing as
a viable occupation. This borders on quixotic, given all the new ways of not
getting paid that new technology affords authors. A case in point: Amazon's
Kindle 2, which was released yesterday. 
 
The Kindle 2 is a portable, wireless, paperback-size device onto which
people can download a virtual library of digitalized titles. Amazon sells
these downloads, and where the books are under copyright, it pays royalties
to the authors and publishers. 
 
Serves readers, pays writers: so far, so good. But there's another thing
about Kindle 2 -- its heavily marketed text-to-speech function. Kindle 2 can
read books aloud. And Kindle 2 is not paying anyone for audio rights. 
 
True, you can already get software that will read aloud whatever is on your
computer. But Kindle 2 is being sold specifically as a new, improved,
multimedia version of books -- every title is an e-book and an audio book
rolled into one. And whereas e-books have yet to win mainstream enthusiasm,
audio books are a billion-dollar market, and growing. Audio rights are not
generally packaged with e-book rights. They are more valuable than e-book
rights.
Income
from audio books helps not inconsiderably to keep authors, and publishers,
afloat. 
 
You may be thinking that no automated read-aloud function can compete with
the dulcet resonance of Jim Dale reading 'Harry Potter' or of authors, ahem,
reading themselves. But the voices of Kindle 2 are quite listenable. There's
even a male version and a female version. (A book by, say, Norman Mailer on
Kindle 2 might do a brisk business among people wondering how his prose
would sound in measured feminine tones.) 
 
And that sort of technology is improving all the time. I.B.M. has patented a
computerized voice that is said to be almost indistinguishable from human
ones.
This voice is programmed to include 'ums,' 'ers' and sighs, to cough for
attention, even to 'shhh' when interrupted. According to Andy Aaron, of
I.B.M.'s Thomas J. Watson research group speech team: 'These sounds can be
incredibly subtle, even unnoticeable, but have a profound psychological
effect. It can be extremely reassuring to have a more attentive-sounding
voice. 
 
When I read that quotation, it hit me: Hey, I know Andy Aaron. Years ago, he
said he was working on some sort of voice simulation, and asked to work my
Southern accent into the mix. I don't remember whether we got around to that
or not, and this new I.B.M. software is designed, at any rate, not for audio
books but for computer help lines. So no part of my voice is competing with
my own audio books yet. But people who want to keep on doing creative things
for a living must be duly vigilant about any new means of transmitting their
work. 
 
What the guild is asserting is that authors have a right to a fair share of
the value that audio adds to Kindle 2's version of books. For this, the
guild is being assailed. On the National Federation of the Blind's Web site,
the guild is accused of arguing that it is illegal for blind people to use
'readers, either human or machine, to access books that are not available in
alternative formats like Braille or audio. 
 
In fact, publishers, authors and American copyright laws have long provided
for free audio availability to the blind and the guild is all for
technologies that expand that availability. (The federation, though, points
out that blind readers can't independently use the Kindle 2's visual,
on-screen
controls.)
But that doesn't mean Amazon should be able, without copyright-holders'
participation, to pass that service on to everyone. 
 
The guild is also accused of wanting to profiteer off family bedtime
rituals. A lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation sarcastically warned
that 'parents everywhere should be on the lookout for legal papers haling
them into court for reading to their kids. 
 
For the record: no, the Authors Guild does not expect royalties from anybody
doing non-commercial performances of 'Goodnight Moon. If parents want to
send their children off to bed with the voice of Kindle 2, however, it's
another matter. 
 
 
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