KINDLE: THE FUTURE OF PUBLISHING?

Be careful reading a book to your children, you may violated copyright laws! I am not kidding.
According to C-NET News that claim was raised Tuesday by the Authors Guild, an advocacy group for writers. Paul Aitken, the group's executive director objects to the text-to-speech feature on Amazon's Kindle 2 digital-book reader. Ill come to Kindle in a moment, it is what at my times we called an e-book reader. But first picture this: you buy a book from Amazon or wherever, pay for it, and then read it to your blind mother. Get it? According to the Authors Guild you owe the author extra royalties! Or assume this: you buy the electronic version of a book, have it on your computer and because YOU are blind, or just because you feel like it, use the text to voice feature of your computer to have it read to you. According to the Authors Guild you owe the author royalties beyond what you paid already! Why do I get the impression that this is Thursday and somehow I missed the planet and find myself on Vega or is it Mars? My position is that I buy a book and how I read it, whether I read it in the bath tub, in a garden chair, on my computer, or have it read to my by my Kindle is MY decision. If the Writers Guild doesnt like it, then they should not have published the book, or at a minimum placed on the title their contract condition, like to be read on the toilette only.
Now, just in case you havent read anything written beyond your text messages recently, let me explain to you what kindle is. Kindle is Amazons e-book reader that takes digital text and displays it on a black and white screen of a small hand-held device. Version 2 is capabale of converting text into sound.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• AMAZON
• KINDLE
• TEXT
• TO
• VOICE
• AUTHORS
• GUILD
• PAUL
• AITKEN
• C-NET
• ZDNET
• COPYRIGHT
• DAILY
• ANALYST
• BVONGRABE
• VONGRABE
• ECONOMY

[hollywoodartchick]

I remember TRS80 - they called it "trash 80," at least its owners did.

Intellectual property rights are really outta whack. on the one hand, technology has opened a pandora's box that allows savvy users access to all kinds of things for free. NO price can compete with "Free." As a professional artist, I know that I would not want someone making my job "obsolete" because there is no way for me to be paid for my work. OTOH, they are criminalizing everyone and controlling our use too much..

[bvongrabe]

I understand what you are saying. The problem I have is that I do not want to pay twice for the item I buy. Unless I am wrong, there is no loss for the artist whether I read the book I buy myself or have it read by the computer. I do not reproduce the item for commercial purposes. That was my only point. :)

[hollywoodartchick]

Yes, I definitely agree that they are pushing their definition of "piracy" to laughable extremes. And the artists are not the real concern of the publishers/producers who push for these restriction. In fact, the artists usually get screwed every time there is new technology because the corporations claim that rampant piracy is cutting their profits to the point that they can't afford to pay us. So they rip us both off.

[bvongrabe]

Being an artist myself, I clearly agree with your assessment.

[liquid79]

Text to speech has been around for over 40 years. This is just an advancement in the technology. SHould parents be sued for reading to their children too? Ridiculous! You cant compare a voice actor with a computer simulated voice. People that enjoy audiobooks will continue to do so because of the quality of speech If anything Kindles text to speech feature will open the audiobook market to a wider audience. Authors Guild is blowing hot air.

[adafv83]

Nice video. Love it!

[siddhaam]

Nice one sir!