Authors Guild President Wants To End Royalty-Free TTS On Kindle 539
An anonymous reader writes "The president of the Authors Guild has launched a rant in the NY Times about how the Kindle 2 provides Text-to-Speech capabilities that, oh the horror, allow the user to have any text on the Kindle read to her. Roy Blunt, Jr. moans that this is copyright infringement of audio books, and that Kindle users should be forced to pay royalties on audio even though they've already paid for the text version of a book! Amazingly he harps on about how TTS technology has become so good that it may replace humans — and then uses this to argue that it's unfair for Kindle to provide TTS! I think the Authors Guild need a new president — someone less of a Luddite, and more familiar with copyright law." (See also the Guild's executive director's similar claims that reading aloud, royalty-free, is an illegal function of software.)
not crazy, auditioning for a job w/ RIAA (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure the record labels pay much better for nutty speech than a bunch of writers.
What an idiot (Score:5, Funny)
What an idiot - doesn't he realize how wonderful it is that technology makes it possible for us to avoid paying the authors we like as much money as we used to?
NYT? The irony... (Score:5, Funny)
The NYT is available on the Kindle. I wonder how many people are using TTS to listen to his rant. I know funny, and that's funny.
Put this in your Kindle and smoke it (Score:3, Funny)
FUCK OFF!
<after basic filter>
{beeep} OFF!
<after christian fundamentalist filter>
you poor misunderstood darling.
<after DRM filter>
go get em tiger - filthy pirates oughta be hung...
<after *AA filter>
let's do lunch.
<after /. filter>
first post!
Re:I own one (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Let's do a reality check (Score:3, Funny)
And be ready with a credit card every time you hit the magnifying glass button in Acrobat Reader.
Re:Let's do a reality check (Score:5, Funny)
Call me a Luddite, but parents shouldn't let their Kindles take over parental responsibilities. They should let TV take them over like God (and the big media companies) intended!
Re:Put this in your Kindle and smoke it (Score:4, Funny)
You spelled "bless your heart" wrong.
Re:Let's do a reality check (Score:2, Funny)
I've bought a number of audiobooks based simply on the fact that Scott Brick narrates them. I wouldn't consider tts to be something able to replace a reader of his skill.
So you would love a bricked kindle?
Re:Audio books are worth more than e-books (Score:3, Funny)
Most of that value is surely the quality of the actors' voices - which also comes with a cost.
Both of those are avoided with the kindle's text-to-speech software, which presumably sounds something like a dalek.
Ergo, the comparison is a bag of rat knackers.
Re:Advocacy organizations (Score:3, Funny)
Well, my... that was quite the convincing argument! It nearly gave me whiplash. I bow to your superior oratory and reasoning skills, and forthwith recant everything bad I've ever said about unions.
Not!