Amazon Caves On Kindle 2 Text-To-Speech 370
On Wednesday we discussed news that the Authors Guild had objected to the text-to-speech function on Amazon's Kindle 2, claiming that it infringed on audio book copyright. Today, Amazon said that while the feature is legally sound, they would be willing to disable text-to-speech on a title-by-title basis at the rightsholder's request. "We have already begun to work on the technical changes required to give authors and publishers that choice. With this new level of control, publishers and authors will be able to decide for themselves whether it is in their commercial interests to leave text-to-speech enabled. We believe many will decide that it is."
DRM wins again! (Score:2, Insightful)
So you can't "buy" the title, can't sell it or loan it out, can't give it away, and now they can control precisely how you consume it. Is it any wonder why devices like this are doomed to fail when it comes to the mass market. People aren't complete stupid.
Re:Time will tell (Score:5, Insightful)
Goes to far (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Seriously... (Score:5, Insightful)
This would be that sort of thing without any special version thereof.
The big deal here was that it was cutting out another revenue stream (which was more per unit than the books were...) and cutting out the pay to the person doing the book reading. Unfortunately, not all books are converted to audio. Most are not, actually.
Now, if Kindle can do audio books, it's sort of fine- but it's going to be an overpriced media player that one could accomplish this limited result with a smaller, cheaper device. The thing that made the Kindle even more special is that you didn't NEED someone to read out a book into audio format, it was going to open up a larger space up for the blind. That is now up in the air that there will be any such thing.
Not Hackable (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I would demand lower prices for TTS-disabled books. I should not be paying the same amount that I would for a non-disabled book, and I certainly should be paying more for a book that is not disabled. Maybe I'll just go back to reading books from Project Gutenberg until this all settles down...
Re:So Amazon wins anyway (Score:1, Insightful)
Wrong. There is a BETTER operating system available for free.
Re:Goes to far (Score:4, Insightful)
Amazon/Kindle should stick to their guns and let the end user decide to turn on the TTS engine or not.
Then the authors who complained to the Guild would stick to their guns and withdraw some works from Kindle entirely. Would you want such an outcome?
Re:DRM for text is a really ridiculous idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people cannot set that up. The point of DRM is not to be un-hackable, it is to be un-hackable by most people, and a system that requires the assembly of a robot is beyond what most Kindle users can set up. In fact, Kindle would be the most successful DRM system ever if it required a robotic finger to defeat, because that is a circumvention measure that cannot be distributed as a file over the Internet, the way systems like deCSS can be.
Re:DRM for text is a really ridiculous idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if the encryption algorithm and hardware were "unhackable", how hard could it be to set up a robot finger to press "Next Page" + a digital camera to photograph each page + OCR if desired????
Sounds like a lot more work than just buying a paper copy, gillotineing the spine off and shoving it in a sheet fed scanner.
Being moderately effective against the casual copiers is about the best a DRM scheme can home for. The geeks and the serious pirates will always find a way to get an unprotected copy.
Clever play (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how many of the authors will now 'opt out' of the text-to-speech feature. I'm guessing: none.
Amazon showed this threat for what it was: extortion.
Re:So Amazon wins anyway (Score:3, Insightful)
Picking on people's typos is a cheap shot.
Re:Did I miss the memo? DRM is OK now? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:DRM for text is a really ridiculous idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Serious impacts... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DRM for text is a really ridiculous idea (Score:5, Insightful)
irrelevant. It takes *ONE* person to do it and distribute the file. You missed the "and OCR it".
Re:DRM wins again! (Score:5, Insightful)
And Then they are again so intelligent that some pay premium to strip the DRM from their old iTunes tracks instead of downloading these from another source.
Yeah, people are not completely stupid...
Re:Serious impacts... (Score:1, Insightful)
Ultimately Amazon shouldn't concede on this. In fact I want this to be legally tested and put to rest asap.
Your mistake is expecting a company, also known as "another group of people", to fight the legal battles YOU care about.
Having worked closely with Amazon in the past, I'm certain if you approached them with a promise to assist in paying for the legal proceedings, they would do their best to satisfy this yearning of yours.
Kids these days.. Back in my day, we funded the things we cared about instead of whining on these instant messengar boards. :rolleyes:
Re:DRM for text is a really ridiculous idea (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right at the current price point. When the publishers and Amazon are raking in $10-20 for an ebook with no physical substance, sometimes 50-100% more than the cost of a paperback, it certainly does seem worth breaking.
Only by loosening the bounds that hold 'em and substantially dropping the price will they ever be able to effectively compete with the printed word, piracy, and free content without completely stripping out the DRM. Tightening up the DRM and raising the price (by forcing duplicate purchases in some cases) seems like a ridiculously ill-thought out move.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Good solution (Score:3, Insightful)
This really makes the choices obvious for authors, as well as for the dim-witted authors guild:
Either you:
a) Think you can profitably produce and market an audio book version of your work, or
b) Realize the audio book market for your work is too small to be profitable, and you'd be better off taking advantage of Kindle's no-cost-to-you TTS enhanced sales of your e-Book, or
c) Both of the above. The truth being that TTS is decades away from sounding anything like an emotive prosodic human reading, and that the market overlap between true human read audio books and robotic sounding TTS is miniscule.
***
As far as how TTS will improve, I can only see two long-term possibilities that will allow it to approach human quality:
1) It'll be based on a human-level AI where it can interpret the text as well as a human. It'll happen, but not for a long time.
2) An expert system approach, based partly on language/speech expertise, and partly on limited semantic analysis (e.g. based on something like Cyc) where plain text can be analyzed and marked up with prosody/voicing/emotional, etc, annotation to be interpreted by a suitable enhanced TTS engine. This doesn't need to be done in real-time - e-Books and other content could be offline processed into this enhanced form. This option wouldn't result in as nuanced a performance as a human one (because it'd be based on minimal understanding of the text), but it could be a major step up from the minimal prosodic/etc rules built into TTS engines today, and the current lack of emotional/voicing control. We're still talking years if not decades of research and development though.
Re:DRM for text is a really ridiculous idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not seeing any difference between "digital rights management" and the MicroProse C=64 disks I used to buy which used digital errors to block copying.
"Digital rights management" goes beyond just copying, though that is the primary driver. It includes not being able to use "region encoded" DVDs that you bought elsewhere. It means they don't want to let you skip over the copyright warning when you play your movie. It means they don't want to let you have a computer read a book that you just paid for. What does any of that have to do with "copy protection"?
Re:NOT author & publisher's choice (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon should not have caved to this ridiculous request. The final choice is with consumers, who should refuse to buy any book that they can't run through text-to-speech or any other device that enables them to use their purchase.
While I agree that Amazon should have told these guys to go fuck themselves, what they have actually done is a brilliant "carrot and stick" maneuver that will ultimately get them what they want:
1. Amazon gives in to the Guild's demand (the carrot), and will conveniently label those books on their site which prohibit TTS.
2. People who think the Authors Guild is a bunch of dicks can boycott the clearly-marked titles and purchase others.
3. Sales of TTS-prohibited books plummet (the stick).
4. Authors Guild realizes that their greed has actually cost them money, and reverses their decision.
~Philly
Re:DRM for text is a really ridiculous idea (Score:5, Insightful)
>>> I'm not seeing any difference between "digital rights management" and the MicroProse C=64 disks I used to buy which used digital errors to block copying. It seems they both achieve the same goal: Stop copying and also block the user from uploading the Microprose game to a friend.
Well I am sorry, but I clearly see a difference.
"Copy Protection" did not prevent you from performing any of the following actions...
1. It did not prevent you from using your software on a portable unit. (SX-64)
2. It did not prevent you from using your software on a newer, upgraded model. (C=128) (Although this could be debated if the protection scheme turned out to be incompatible with the newer hardware. In those cases, the publisher, inevitably released patches or new versions that were compatible if the market conditions were acceptable.)
3. It did not prevent you from using your software on a replacement unit. (New C=64 machine purchased to replace broken C=64 machine)
4. It did not prevent you from taking your software over to a friends house and playing it with your friend. (If it was multi-player. At least you didn't have to cart your C=64 around with you to show off your new purchase.)
5. It did not prevent your from donating or re-selling that software to someone else after you no longer had a use for it. (Right of First Sale.)
6. It did not prevent you from using the software if you just happened to forget the password, forget the login account, or otherwise fail to validate the myriad other ways that are now used to ensure that the person attempting to use the software in indeed the original purchaser.
All of these issues are and have been generally applied to consumer purchases in the past. No one places DRM type restrictions on my purchase of an automobile, house, or TV set. Yet "Digital Rights Management" seeks to prevent the consumer from doing any one of the above.
In summary, "Copy Protection" prevented you from making unauthorized "copies" of the software. "DRM" is designed to prevent you from making unauthorized "uses" of that same software. However, letting a corporation who's ultimate motive is monetary profit (Nothing wrong with that) decide what is a legal and authorized "use" (Everything wrong with that) goes against the entire grain and intent of Copyright laws. Copyright laws were enacted to create a fair and balanced benefit between the author AND the public welfare! If we allow corporations to restrict how knowledge can be used (and that IS what intellectual property is, knowledge.) then we restrict everyone's, including our own, future development and welfare.
Re:DRM for text is a really ridiculous idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Excellent summary. People try hard to obfuscate the difference.
Motivating Piracy (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like a lot of work. I'd rather just buy the amazon.com book, and then download the pure text file off bittorent as a "backup" that I can conveniently play in my laptop or Iphone or Kindle.
Of course since you now HAVE to do this in order to have the Kindle TTS work it makes me wonder how many people will simple skip the amazon.com step. It seems to me that this is the usual result of DRM: customer is prevented from doing something reasonable, customer gets really irritated with the company, customer finds out they can stick it to the company by downloading from P2P, customer stops being a customer.
Re:DRM for text is a really ridiculous idea (Score:3, Insightful)
DRM isn't illegal.
I know I might go to karma hell for saying that but people need to get over this.
People scream bloody murder about fair use and doctrine of first sale, I have some sad news for you. Fair use and doctrine of first sale only prevent companies from using *LEGAL MEANS* (i.e a law suit) against you if you try to exercise that right (and actually it doesn't prevent them from suing, but they shouldn't win). It doesn't mean they have to help you exercise that right or that they can't put in a technical means to stop you.
What really needs to happen is people need to write there congressmen and senators to get better consumer rights (more updated and recent) laws passed
No problem (Score:1, Insightful)
'course NOT selling your product is a good way to get no money, but that's their lookout.
If they don't want to sell because they want to keep control, don't sell it.
And get bugger all for it.
Re:DRM for text is a really ridiculous idea (Score:3, Insightful)
"That's not a DRM break, it exploits the fact that DRM can't work."
Re:DRM for text is a really ridiculous idea (Score:4, Insightful)
No, this is Amazon's attempt to play nice with publishers because they need content for the Kindle to work.
Holding their ground would be doing the opposite.
They know that time is on their side. They are hoping that, like with iTMS, e-books will inevitably represent the largest slice of the book & magazine pie. At that point they will be able to do whatever they like.
Good text-to-speech could conceivably kill off the audio book market. But I don't think that you could say it's the same thing as a copyrighted reading of a book performance. It's more like reading a book to your child. So for Amazon to stand their ground they'd have to recognize this as reinterpreting the law to force a market for a product that people eventually aren't going to want or need. And then say, "nope".
Re:DRM for text is a really ridiculous idea (Score:3, Insightful)
> No one places DRM type restrictions on my purchase of an automobile, house, or TV set.
Bad example. They do indeed put DRM type restrictions on buying a house in many places. They are called Homeowners Associations and Restrictive Covenants in some deeds. Until the courts and legislatures rewrote them (a dangerous flirtation with ex post facto lawmaking itself, probably the best of many bad options here) some properties had permanent restrictions saying you couldn't sell the property to [fill in oppressed minority some previous owner a hundred years ago hated].
The problem with DRM is that it makes all sorts of stupid restrictions too easy to implement and the DMCA then makes it illegal to remove restrictions on uses of copyrighted works that no law forbids. DRM that makes copying hard can at least be justified somewhat by noting that making copies is illegal in the first place. But locking a copy of a work to one reader can't even claim that figleaf of moral cover.
Re:DRM for text is a really ridiculous idea (Score:4, Insightful)
You are not thinking this through to the obvious conclusion.
Try it like this:
Simply put, if it takes $1000 to copy the first $10 book, and $0 for an infinite number of copies, the DRM is broken.
Welcome to the digital age, once you get the hang of it, it's pretty neat.