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The Kindle aint no swindle, Roy
The latest version of Amazon's ebook reader, the Kindle 2, has been attracting plenty of positive attention for its slimline form, style and functionality but has also drawn criticism from an unexpected quarter - from Authors Guild President and humorist, Roy Blount Jr, who isn't amused about the Kindle's new text to speech functionality.
The Kindle 2 has a function that allows published works that are downloaded onto the device to be converted into speech and played back through the small speakers in the device in either a male or female voice, functionality that will no doubt be attractive to the visually impaired, drivers on long trips or for people who are simply too damn lazy to read the book themselves.
The Authors Guild is in a tizzy because it feels that the Kindle 2 is going to undermine the billion dollar a year audiobook market. Blount apparently wasn't joking when he wrote in a New York Times editorial this week that 'authors have a right to a fair share of the value that audio adds to Kindle 2's version of books'.
An article on the Guild's Web site even goes as far as suggesting that publishers should push Amazon to cripple the new Kindle by disabling the text to speech function:
'Publishers certainly could contractually prohibit Amazon from adding audio functionality to its ebooks without authorization, and Amazon could comply by adding a software tag that would prohibit its machine from creating an audio version of a book unless Amazon has acquired the appropriate rights'.
The Authors Guild is proposing that people who pay for an ebook should be further taxed if they want to buy a device to listen to it. But when publishers commission audiobooks they invest in a new product which results in the creation of a new copyright - the audio recording - which can be exploited through CDs and downloads. Audiobook publishers commission famous actors to read the books and invest a considerable amount of time and money in the product to make it compelling. When the Kindle converts a book into speech however there is no additional investment required from publishers and since the user has already purchased the book, conceivably no loss either.
Audio recordings and the public performance of copyrighted works are protected by the copyright laws, however the Kindle doesn't infringe either of these rights, when the Kindle interprets the text on the page and translates that into speech it doesn't create a new copyrighted work, and the text to speech function is clearly intended for personal, not commercial, use.
The Kindle's text to speech functionality isn't infringing any copyright, it is simply taking a work that you've purchased and consuming it in a different way in much the same way that sound editing software can represent songs as sound waves on a computer screen, and even record industry executives haven't gone as far as demanding royalties on that.
In his editorial Blount shortsightedly points out that the ebook market is as yet unproven whereas the audiobook market is worth a billion dollars - but shouldn't that be a reason to support ebook manufacturers not to attack them? Ebooks have the potential to greatly increase the efficient distribution of books and newspapers in an environmentally friendly way that will reduce the physical costs of printing and distribution of books, achieving cost savings and greater revenues for publishers and authors to an extent which should eventually far outstrip revenues from audiobooks. Amazon and other ebook reader manufacturers should be supported for creating devices which provide new avenues for book sales, not lambasted for it.
In any event the whole debate about the Kindle 2 could be somewhat premature if early user reviews are anything to go by. According to Web entrepreneur, Michael Roe, who recently purchased a Kindle 2, the device's text to speech function isn't anything to write home about, 'the Kindle's text to speech capabilities are about as sophisticated as and as useful as the text to speech capabilities on my 4 year old Apple laptop'. Roe said that he didn't think that the new functionality would change his media consumption habits at all, 'when I want to read I'll read, when I want an audiobook I would download an audiobook.'
At a time when the ebook market is still very much in its infancy, a device like the Kindle offers an exciting new distribution mechanism which may do for books, newspapers and blogs what the iPod has done for music and radio. The Authors Guild should be supporting Amazon, not threatening lawsuits, because if this argument ends up in court it will ultimately be consumers that are the big losers.
Comments
15
Subscribe to commentsFredFeb 27th 2009 8:34AM
This is such a tough one. And it should be interesting to follow in the courts. Personally, I understand where the writer's guild is coming from, and I think it will probably go the same way as the issue with online TV show broadcasts, resulting in them getting a cut. I don't particularly care, as the kindle 1 or 2 is FAR too expensive, and I like my free library books, thank you.
JeebusFeb 27th 2009 1:59PM
No, it's not a tough one. I'm so sick if these content providers wanting to suck more money out of us. They need to STFU and go to work every day, like the rest of us, instead of getting paid the rest of their lives for a few months of work.
FredFeb 27th 2009 2:51PM
And how do you propose that happens? Who would pay an author based on how good his/her book 'may' do? The same would happen for written books as well, the author getting paid by the publisher once, not for every book sold. That's how you would have to do it. If you did it your way, the same would have to be true for software as well. The maker would have to be paid based on sales prospects. But what if I want to make my own app? Should I then not get paid for each piece sold?
miche lbasilieresFeb 27th 2009 9:04AM
well, you miss the point: an audio book is a separate product and a separate revenue stream, potentially eliminated by this device. Any rationalizations are just that, and don't get around this fact. If they had invented a device that could turn a digital book into a watchable film, they would be co-opting film rights.
Whether this is good for publishers and authors can't be predicted, but it clearly threatens a distinct, monetary channel. Surely you can understand why this would make writers, among the lowest paid workers in the first world, uneasy.
RocketboyFeb 27th 2009 12:09PM
The internet threatens newspapers as well. Should we have a court order block newspapers?
24 news channels threaten network news. Should we have a court order block 24 hour news channels?
P.F. BrunsMar 2nd 2009 1:46PM
Tell that to a text-impaired reader, such as a person who is blind. This would be fair use even if it didn't run smack into the Americans with Disabilities act. Normally, I'm a fan of Roy Blount, Jr., but I will no longer buy his products until he changes his stance.
Eric H.Feb 27th 2009 9:34AM
They are not just rationalizations. The ability to apply text-to-speech to ebooks has been around for quite some time now. Why is it that putting this into a handheld ebook reader is what now draws the attention? Personally I cannot imagine anyone who would attempt to substitute text-to-speech functionality for a professionally done audiobook. The flow of text-to-speech is horrible, pronunciation is often completely wrong (especially for people's names), and the emphasis is placed in the wrong spot. I find that when i use text-to-speech for long passages I have to focus far too much on the sounds my computer is generating for it to be worth it.
Now, in the future text-to-speech may get a little bit better, but I don't see the day coming anytime soon that text-to-speech will eat a single dollar of the audiobook market. 10-15 years down the road might be a different story, but not here and not now.
pmowFeb 27th 2009 9:48AM
This is purely a licensing issue. Authors presumably already have disparate terms for ebooks, as compared to books in print. Ebooks are more convenient, and obtaining a DRM-free copy you can text-to-speech from is a feature. The issue isn't whether the device *should* be able to do it, as other devices already can. It's whether or not Amazon has the right to distribute their books. In the end, they will get a cut, the size of which will largely depend on Amazon's selling power.
JamesFeb 27th 2009 10:30AM
Excellent piece. Of course, text-to-speech has been around for ages, and it's only because the Kindle has such visibility that the authors even noticed. The difference between "Microsoft Sam" reading me a book and Stephen Fry is night and day -- it would be dishonest to say otherwise. And if they actually win this fight, it'll be a huge blow to software everywhere -- the Kindle is certainly not the only device with this capability, and if they force inclusion of a "speech flag" on one device, it's only a matter of time before it's imposed all over.
Timmay!Feb 27th 2009 10:45AM
The issue I have with Blount's argument is the same one I have with the record industry, if it makes a precedent in the court, it's going to do more harm than good. Here's what I've taken from Blount's argument, "any public reading of a written work is a copyright infringement". This means that teachers reading books to their students could potentially be a copyright infringement, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. It also means that, if I'm out in public, reading a book or a magazine, and I happen to say to a friend "hey, listen to this", and read a passage out loud, the copyright policy to smack me around with a lawsuit.
What really worries me about that argument is that recording industries around the world have used the same thing to sue garages and offices for playing music from one of their artists with the doors open. They claim that is a "public performance of a copyrighted work" and slap them with massive lawsuits. Which means that if I happen to have my car or house windows open while blaring a CD, I could get sued in exactly the same way.
I do understand that protecting copyrighted material and revenue streams is very, very important to any business or industry, but it's apparent that they don't consider the consequences of their actions, that overzealous protection does far more harm than good, and can does a lot to drive piracy and boycotts. Just look at the Spore DRM debacle.
ypsrudyFeb 27th 2009 11:17AM
ypsrudy: The way I see it there really isn't any competition in converting the text to audio. Reason being that I listen to audio books and the whole idea is that the voices to give the story meaning, drama and would change with the different characters and give you that feeling of different people speaking. For example male and female voices, excited or scared voices, well you get the picture. Does the kindle do this? If not there is no threat. Thank you. ypsrudy
JonFeb 27th 2009 1:06PM
I think this is another example of a fearful, technological illiterate being scared of something they don't understand. Have you ever compared a text-to-speech reading of a book vs. a recorded audio book? They aren't the same thing at all! Even if the Kindle 2 had massive leaps and bounds in text-to-speech technology and can somehow magically equal Jim Dale in both expression in reading as well as the number of voices used, it still gets into very, very dangerous territory as other commenters have said. This is the book industry's equivalent to the music industry's draconian attempts to keep a dying distribution method relevant. All they will do is encourage people to turn to less than legitimate means to be able to use the content that they pay for the way they want to. And then they'll spend 10-20 years playing catch up after the damage has already been done, instead of embracing a new technology when it gains popularity.
step21Feb 27th 2009 4:59PM
die, writers guild, die! I hope all the books of the writers that support this get pirated a lot, cause this is just backward, greedy, and totally ridiculous.
VivekaFeb 27th 2009 6:53PM
Sure text-to-speech doesn't beat Stephen Fry reading a book; but there is one segment of the audiobook market you're forgetting - the shite audiobook. These will be terribly threatened. For example Neal Stephenson's wonderful Anathem has an audiobook version that's simply terrible. The voice actor they chose would be fine reading one character, but he does not possess the talent of varying the timbre or accent of his voice for different characters. Instead he varies the raspiness of his voice, such that everyone other than the main character sounds like they are dying of pneumonia. If I could have had a computer read it to me instead, I would have.
So the inclusion of text-to-speech on the Kindle will force publishers to hire actors who are better than a computer program. I can see how this might frighten them.
It is of course the job of the president of the authors' guild to ask us all for more money, and to insist that we accept technological constraints on how we consume the media that we pay for. And it is the right of all of us to tell him to go to hell, particularly on the latter point.
Mel AndersonMar 6th 2009 12:59AM
Everyone wants a piece. OK if you want to make your text to speech a financial windfall for you, then let the consumer know that this book will not allow text to speech and let the consumer decide whether they want to pay the added extra to get this function. I bought the Kindle 2 for the purpose of its text to speech function and everything thing else. Now that I know, I don't think that I would have paid the price. I feel short changed. If I get the option to knowingly purchase a book with disabled text to speech function I would rather not. Now I will have to find a way to screen my purchases ob books very closely to ensure not to purchase any book that has disabled this function. Bully for you. Next time create your own product and stop piggy backing off of someone else.