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.
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No kidding.
Non-infringing use #1 I can think of: setting this thing to play in the car like a normal audiobook. I have a few other "audiobooks" loaded to my ipod that are the result of running scanned or otherwise digital copies through text-to-speech software and it works well enough when there is no alternative (e.g. no professional audiobook) available. I'd love to be able to get some more favorites/classics for times when I can't sit to "read" but can listen perfectly well.
It almost sounds like this ass
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Audio books are worth more than e-books (Score:5, Insightful)
I bought the official audio book of 1984 directly from Amazon.com.
This is exactly Blount's point. You were willing to pay money to get an audio version. Audio books are a huge huge huge market (billions of dollars). E-books are a teeny tiny market (millions of dollars).
E-books are sold cheaply. Audio books command a premium because, as you youself noted, they have a value beyond the text that is worth paying for.
Amazon is Paying e-book prices and selling them as audiobooks. Sure they may sound crappy at the moment but this is likely to change.
Blount is just saying that publisher's need to charge kindle's e-book rights at a rate closer to audiobook rates. And if Amazon does not like that then they need to stop offering the audio conversion.
The tricky part of the argument is this. It's not the publishers who are fighting this. They love expanding the e-book market. Indeed the publisher selling the e-book rights might never have bought the audio rights from the author.
It's the writers who are objecting to having their e-books turned into audio books and not getting paid.
Re:Audio books are worth more than e-books (Score:4, Insightful)
Sometimes certain elements of the process need to STFU. Sometimes it's publishers, who refuse to sell their DRM-laden content in some countries, but are incensed that people would steal said content to get it after being refused at the gates. Sometimes it's the authors, who want to rape the only future their medium really has by charging 60 bucks for a text file.
Both need to give their heads a shake.
Re:Audio books are worth more than e-books (Score:5, Insightful)
There is another way to look at this.
One could say that audio books contain more labor and this is part of why they cost more. Once a technology comes along that removes that labor they should cost less.
That is true, but it misses the point.
Thus the real statement of the quesiton is this: if the manufacturing cost of books and audio books goes down then clearly the price of these should fall. But since audo books and e-books have different roylaty rates, if you change their ratio then you chance the total earnings to the authors. thus you need to re-adjust the roylaty rates so that the authors get the same total earnings.
Why should you want to assure authors get the same as before: when you sum up the total earnings (revenue minus cost of production) for books this get's divided amongst the publishers and authors. There is some dynamic equilibrium of what is neccessary to pay authors to entice a sufficient number of them to produce the books you want. e.g. if authors got no money, there would be fewer books written (not zero of course, but there could be no professional authors at all!)
If you want to argue that authors are paid to much then you have to prove that their is artificial scarcity of authors. good luck!
So in the end there has to be some fixed amount of money flowing to authors to maintain this status quo.
Blout is saying that if you canablaize a high profit audio book sale with a low-profit e-book sale then you simply need to charge more for e-books to make the total for the authors come out the same as before.
it's okay if the overall price declines. indeed this is great since it may increase sales. But in the end you can't simply lower the price by lowering the author's roylaties.
Re:Audio books are worth more than e-books (Score:4, Interesting)
This is false. If this were an ideal free market, it would be true -- but the fact of the matter is that there are barriers to entry, incomplete information, and most importantly, works of art/literature are NOT a commodity good.
Regardless of the the cost to produce the good (author + publisher), the price is determined by the seller, and will only loosely follow marginal cost if there is ample competition.
In short, this has little to do with economics, other than the fact the e-books compete with audiobooks, and more to do with terms of licensing of a copyrighted work.
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Blout is saying that if you canablaize a high profit audio book sale with a low-profit e-book sale then you simply need to charge more for e-books to make the total for the authors come out the same as before.
The problem with this is, not everybody competes in the same market. The number of books available in tape/cd/mp3 form is a small percentage, at best, of the number of books put out each year. Many books either see audiobook release only years after their initial release, or not at all.
Kindle offers yo
Re:Audio books are worth more than e-books (Score:5, Insightful)
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
- Robert A. Heinlein, "Life-Line".
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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.
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I certainly agree that a professionally produced audio book is worth more than the plain text version, however, that really shouldn't have any bearing at all on this case. Here are some example situations. Tell me if you think each one is infringing on the author's rights:
1. I buy an ebook. I read it to myself.
2. I buy an ebook. I read it aloud to myself.
3. I buy an ebook. I read it aloud to my wife.
4. I buy an ebook. I hand it to my wife. She reads it aloud to me.
5. I buy an ebook. I pay a student
Re:Audio books are worth more than e-books (Score:5, Insightful)
Now if you read the article you know this is not about stopping you from readin out loud or even reading out loud to another person. Or even a librarian reading to a class. it's about sales of audio books while paying e-book royalty rates.
There are no audiobooks sold for Kindle. What gets sold are plain text books, and the device (not even the book!) is bundled with a text-to-speech reader. It's not the same as audiobooks. This is also in no way a violation of the authors' copyright, or anyone's else - they still get paid in full for the copy of their book. Copyright does not restrict the means of the end user to interpret the text - whether it is simply read, or TTS used to read it aloud, shouldn't be of any concern of the author.
No, this is greed, pure and simple. They could get away with charging extra for audiobooks, and they want to keep doing that; and now Amazon is pulling the rug from under that business model. So there's a lot of noise. But, gladly, Amazon and the customers have full right to just tell them to STFU, and that's what's most likely going to happen.
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Simple. because one is being sold and the other isn't. You might as well ask, why can't I do the following.
1) buy one copy of the print version.
2) record an actor reading it
3) sell as many copies of the recording as I please and not pay the author a dime.
furthermore to tighten the analogy, instead do this.
4) for every audio-version I sell, I buy one copy of the paper or e-book edition.
that way the author is getting the e-book roylaty rate and I'm pocketing the audio book rate.
But (3) isn't what's going on. The device shifts the content from text to speech. The buyer of the e-book doesn't have the right to distribute either the text or a recording of the TTS version. But the creation of the TTS version is certainly fair use. I can now buy a dead-tree book and record myself reading it. I can't sell the recording, but I can listen to it.
I could also cut up the book and turn it into a paper mache unicorn. Are you suggesting that I have to pay different royalties to the author base
Re:Audio books are worth more than e-books (Score:5, Insightful)
But selling a device with text-to-speech capability isn't the same as selling an audiobook. An audiobook is a derivative work. A device with TTS capability is not a derivative work (well, we'd probably have to have a court case to tell us for sure, but I don't think it is).
Here's my logic: The original copyright holder gets copyright in derivative works. But copyright requires that a work be fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Simply providing TTS doesn't do that. As soon as the output of TTS is saved on a tape or as an MP3 file, then you have a derivative work, but that's not what Amazon is doing with the Kindle.
Re:Audio books are worth more than e-books (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I allowed to hire someone to read the book to me without paying the author any extra money?
I believe I am, so why can't I hire a computer to do the same thing?
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I see your point, but I disagree.
(Being entirely beside the point, that would be a copyright violation. This isn't... at least in any reasonable court of law.)
This is a natural result of e-books. It's more natural than the introduction of the VCR. Remember, the MPAA about had a collective heart attack over that one. Progress will happen. Sometimes the idiots and the greedy of the world will manage to slow it down for a time.
Frankly the best way I see to counter this is to sell the audio books bundled
Re:Audio books are worth more than e-books (Score:4, Insightful)
So if I pay a nanny to read a bedtime story to my kid, I'm violating copyright?
Re:Audio books are worth more than e-books (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a HUGE difference between an audiobook and a TTS. Like comparing a kids stick figure to a masterwork painting.
TTS mispronounces words like crazy, has very poor pacing and no emotional content. Audiobooks often have sound cues and other content to make the presentation much more like someone acting out the book, rather that simply reading it.
It doesn't even matter. If TTS is a perfect replacement for a manually-recorded audiobook, so what? It's not a copyright infringement to use TTS or to distribute it, and the author is still properly compensated for his work (which was scribbling the text, not doing the recording), so morally it's perfectly fine too.
Re:not crazy, auditioning for a job w/ RIAA (Score:5, Interesting)
Try reading the article before you judge. After reading I am more suspect that these posts are being put up by those who are more pro-Amazon looking for a sympathetic crowd.
Mr. Blunt is NOT ranting. He actually does put forth a good argument that authors should be paid for the audio rights for their books if an audio production is being sold by a third party.
There ALREADY are legal exceptions for the blind to produce and distribute free audio versions of texts, and btw the kindle uses on-screen controls that no blind person could operate in order to access the audio functions, currently.
Amazon is indeed advertising these products as an audio book(the rights of which are worth far more currently than the rights for an e-book) and an e-book in one w/o paying for the rights to sell an audio book.
The audio functions of the books are coming closer to human levels and are being marketed and sold as such.
Remember while copyright laws have been abused and in many cases are abusive and extreme in their extent; still, for every exec and RIAA stooge getting paid hand over fist there are ten creative writers and authors who make an honest living using those laws as well.
Fight the abuse and the abusers, not the people who are using Copyright as it was intended, which still despite what you might hear is the vast majority of copyright users and creative workers.
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So all Amazon really has to do is change the advertising. Stop calling them audiobooks and call them what they are, e-books. Then make a bigger deal of the TTS on the Kindle. There, now they aren't "selling" an audiobook. They are selling an e-book on a device that happens to be able to read it to you via audio.
It's a text file with DRM, it's not like a normal audiobook where you have to pay someone to read it and for recording time in a studio. It doesn't deserve the same pricing as an audiobook, regardles
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Speaking as someone who is visually impaired and not totally blind, a device like Kindle is not only usable but also much nicer than some of the other book reader options available, having seen the interface I can easily see myself using such a feature as an option.
But back to the point at hand!
I see where his argument comes from, but this goes well beyond the era of audio books when the real consumers were people like me (or people who didn't like actually reading I suppose). We're in a new era where an e-
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Look at Adobe vs Sklyarov & Elcomsoft back in 2001.
Adobe tried to prosecute for creating software that enabled blind people to read e-books. The jury chose to exercise their constitutional right to find them not guilty.
Re:not crazy, auditioning for a job w/ RIAA (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but I don't buy that argument.
From where I sit, it just sounds like the Author's Guild is pissed that someone invented--or more offensively, sold--a technology that undermines one of their revenue streams. That's life, that's business, that's capitalism. Deal with it. The correct response isn't to bring your sob story to the public and politicians and hope that they pity you enough to prop up your outmoded business model for a few extra years. The correct response is to adjust your way of doing business such that both you and your customers benefit from this new technology.
I guess that's too much to ask for today's businesses?
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?
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if only i had mod points
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and it isn't those authors funding this.
it's the jk rowling's.
jk rowling gets rich, lots of other writers starve because she is getting too much of the pie.
books should be much cheaper than they are. current prices are based on costs that no longer exist.
there are a million other forms of entertainment they compete with that did not used to exist.
Hmmm $8 for a paperback, or $8 for a DVD of a movie, or $24 for a video game that plays 20 books worth of time, or ...
Books are way overpriced now. My solution i
Re:What an idiot (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmmm $8 for a paperback, or $8 for a DVD of a movie, or $24 for a video game that plays 20 books worth of time, or ... Books are way overpriced now. My solution is mostly the same as for music- I just stopped buying them. If they were $4, I would probably buy them.
First of all, please tell me where you live because I'm paying up to $10 for a paperback and a minimum of $15 for a DVD and $50 for a video game.
I have to agree with your solution. As prices have gone up I've cut back on my spending because I generally feel the product isn't worth the cost. The result is that I spend LESS money now on entertainment than I did 20 years ago, not even factoring in inflation.
Remember when movies were $4.50 and you could get popcorn and a soda for $5.00? I used to take my kids to the theater every week. 4 x$ 9.5 x 52 = $1976
Now tickets are $10.50 and popcorn and a soda are another $10+. So now we go to the movies once a month, get a soda and sneak-in our own snacks. 4 x 15.50 x 12 = $744.
Who's the loser? The movie theaters, studios and MPAA. At $62 per movie -- assuming we sneak-in snacks -- I'm a lot more selective about what movies we go see. Honestly, there aren't 12 movies released each year that are worth that much to me. But when it only cost about $30 to take the family to the movies, you didn't mind when the many of the movies were bombs.
Ditto for books. I used to read a book a week when they were under $5. Now I buy maybe 12 books a year at an average price of $9.00 and trade with people at work and in my neighborhood.
And video games. Used to be I'd buy new games the week they were released. But at $80 each for the newest titles that can be finished in a week unless you pay EXTRA for on-line gaming, I've cut down to just a few games a year.
The problem I see with the Entertainment industry is they literally want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to keep on increasing the size of their slice of the pie while selling more pieces of more pies at the same time.
Re:What an idiot (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd argue the Kindle will make more money for authors because of an inability to sell e-books secondhand. If the secondhand book market is larger than the audiobook market, the author's guild is coming out ahead.
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I think what he is really scared off is that TTS will become so good that one day will replace writers.
He wants to stop it now!
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We don't pay authors, we pay publishers. Publishers pay the authors.
Dicing us ever more finely... (Score:2, Interesting)
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Pirates! (Score:2, Insightful)
Does this mean screen readers are copyright violation machines? Damn those freeloading blind people!
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Indeed. President of the Authors Guild, meet the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Meet the rant (Score:2)
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.
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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.
Nah, he exempts assistive devices specifically (Score:4, Insightful)
It's us sighted people who are expected to bend over the barrel.
I hope he's comfortable with the fact that he just lost the goodwill of a few hundred thousand geeks (who are among the heaviest readers). Good luck with that, champ.
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Don't forget us freeloading parents. Who knew that I was committing an act of copyright infringement while I read my son his bedtime story? I guess I be a pirate then. *ARRR* Where do I get my eye-patch?
Advocacy organizations (Score:5, Insightful)
People who head advocacy organizations, such as the Authors Guild, have to have issues they can push so as to get members of their groups to pay dues. If there are no real issues, they need to invent them.
Re:Advocacy organizations (Score:5, Informative)
You're right that the Authors Guild relies on members. Which is precisely why, if you disagree with the statements of the Guild, you should put pressure on authors, either by boycotting any author who is a member of the Guild, or writing to them and asking them to signal their disapproval.
When the Authors Guild says these kinds of ridiculous things (and uses logic which, incidentally, implies that people with disabilities should not be allowed to convert media to a form they can use), it makes all members look like greedy idiots. Authors should speak up and tell the Guild that they do not want to be represented as such.
For a partial list of Guild members, see:
http://www.authorsguild.org/news/member_websites/a.html [authorsguild.org]
Contacting the Guild and mentioning that you plan to boycott authors associated with them might also get the message across.
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People who head advocacy organizations, such as the Authors Guild, have to have issues they can push so as to get members of their groups to pay dues. If there are no real issues, they need to invent them.
This is more true then people realize.
Case in point: the city where I grew up is an industrial mill town where almost everyone is union. At some point in the late 70s/early 80s a union for barbers came through and unionized all the barbers there. And of course you pretty much had to join because the other union workers wouldn't go to a non-union barber shop. They were advocating for better pay, working conditions, etc. It sounded great to all those involved.
So what could possibly go wrong? Well for
Re:Advocacy organizations (Score:4, Insightful)
not to get too far off topic here, but I don't think you've thought your proposal through quite enough.
I can think of 2 intractable problems with what you suggest:
1. employers will know they can abuse their employees with no consequences for at least as long as it takes to form a union. a period they can extend by using FUD to hamper unionizing efforts.
2. if and when the problem is actually recognized, how does one quickly and efficiently form an ad-hoc union consisting of thousands of members who live and work in disparate places?
healthy unions are as vital to our economy as healthy companies.
Healthy unions (Score:3, Insightful)
healthy unions are as vital to our economy as healthy companies.
No. Without a healthy union, companies still have to contend with labor supply and demand. If they abuse their employees, the more competent employees will flee to other jobs. Without healthy companies, we don't have an efficient way to coordinate large amounts of workers, so we lose a lot of economies of scale.
To make matters worse, there seems to be a reverse correlation between the health of the union and that of the company.
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And given the fact that they foolishly duplicate the hierarchical structure that leads to their adversaries being so unethical in the first place, they quickly fall victim to the same lack of ethics, as the unethical cream of the crop rises through the ranks and grabs the helm.
Unions become just as corrupt as the corporations and governments that they claim as adversaries, precisely because they collectively behave exactly the same and make the
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Maybe the problem isn't so much with scalability as it is with discrepancies of scale between different balancing powers. For example, I see corporations as being too powerful, compared to governments and people in general. Is there some other power that can increase, to balance out the corporate power? Or can the corporate power be reduced to match the current levels of government power? I think balancing powers off against one another works much better than having the corporations and the governments (an
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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!
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These days, the job of the union has been supplanted by the lawyers. A lawsuit will take care of all the abuses.
Now, as for inability to fire a unionized employee and all of the nice perks the unions bring along, well, that's just people's sense of entitlement speaking.
I own one (Score:5, Informative)
I got my Kindle 2.0 from the UPS driver yesterday.
I tried out this frightful technology and I can tell you - it sounds very much like Stephen Hawking reading to me.
If by "replace humans" he means Stephen Hawking doing book readings at the local Borders well then, yes, maybe he's right.
On the _other_ hand, I'd like my books read to me... "Once more, with feeling" (you dirty grubs).
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Is it THAT good? (Score:2)
How does the kindle TTS compare to say AT&T natural voice, or RealSpeak TTS engine. ...I still think it's much ado about nothing, but if the quality is indistinguishable from a human voice (which I doubt) then their argument might not be quite so feeble.
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Irrelevant. It doesn't matter how good the voice is. If I have the right to hire someone to read a book to me (and I do), then I have the right to hire someone to make a device that reads the book to me.
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Section 101 of Chapter 1 of Title 17 of the US Code reads:
Bed time (Score:2, Insightful)
Is reading a bed time story to its children copyright infringement? This world is really crazy.
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.
Great. What about Special Needs Kids? (Score:2, Interesting)
HE WAS READING CAT IN THE HAT!!! ALOUD!!! OFF WITH HIS HEAD!!!
Or afternoon reading sessions at libraries...
Volunteer book reader: "OK Kids - today we're going to read one of my favourites... Ready? OK! It goes like this...
One fish
Two fish
Red fish
blue fish..."
(BLAMMO!!!! - the door is blasted off
Where's the loss? (Score:5, Insightful)
While the audio-book business may be a billion dollar industry, how many people buy BOTH the print and audio versions of a book? I'm guessing the answer is "not very many".
When buying an e-book for the Kindle, the author and publishers both get their royalties. With what I am assuming to be a negligible amount of people purchasing BOTH, there really isn't a lot of lost royalty rights from non-e double-dipping. The people that might have a beef are the voice actors that are hired to read for audio books. THEY are in serious danger of being replaced by technology. Well, that's progress. Go commiserate with the slide-rule and buggy whip unions.
Having an artificial voice read an e-book really doesn't cut into any publisher or author profits. Instead of revenues shifting solely from paper books to e-books, there is also some shift from audio books to e-books. But the sum total shifting is still the same.
What it sounds like is the Author's Guild saw dollar signs in the potential to get paid twice for the same thing and doesn't like it that the rest of the world doesn't agree with them, hence the temper tantrum.
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I do. I've purchased about a dozen books in both electronic or dead tree and audio formats.
I usually get the audio ones first, then buy the text-based one if I really enjoyed the audio book (for re-reading).
Best argument I've seen in favor of piracy (Score:2)
what it always boils down to: greed (Score:5, Insightful)
They just want to sell it to you on dead tree, then sell you the bits, then sell you the cassette, (excuse me, DRM-laden WMA files) all of the same work, and charge you each time for it, that's all. What's so wrong with that?
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:Put this in your Kindle and smoke it (Score:4, Funny)
You spelled "bless your heart" wrong.
Voice Talent (Score:2, Insightful)
It seems to me that equating the output of a text-to-speech process to the product of a human reading the text as an audiobook debases the value of the people who provide the voices of so many audiobooks. Now, granted, at least some of the people who read for audiobooks are volunteers helping our libraries, but there are also audiobooks that are read by professional talent. Consequently, this claim equates professional actors, or professional voice actors, with a bit of technology. Shouldn't the actors' uni
I don't understand his points (Score:5, Insightful)
So his counterpoint to the argument that copyright laws allows the Kindle text-to-speech feature is that blind people can't use the Kindle? It didn't seem that he remotely addressed their point. For though blind people can't independently operate a Kindle, doesn't mean that they can't operate it all. i.e. "Sonny can you load up A Tale of Two Cities and play it for me". Also for those people who are not blind but visually impaired(dsylexic, far-sighted, glaucoma, etc. ), they may be able to operate the Kindle 2. I am not a copyright lawyer but aren't there organizations [rfbd.org] whose sole purpose is to record books on audiotape royalty-free for blind and visually impaired persons. I don't see how this feature is any different.
Authors or Book Sellers: Which do you like more? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, you do not understand his point. Let me help you.
His point is that Amazon.com would like to set this up as "Big Mean Author's Guild vs. Helpless Blind People". When it's really the far more neutral "The Authors Guild vs. Amazon.com".
Now, a kindle owner pays ~$10 to Amazon.com for an e-book, and some of that goes to the copyright holders (e.g. the authors). The Authors Guild's members get far more money for audio books than for e-books. And the distinction between an audio-book and an e-book is blurred by the TTS feature of the Kindle2. (Right now it sounds like a computer, but in five years, TTS may advance enough to make audio books a thing of the past.)
What's the difference to you, the Kindle owner?
Probably nothing. Amazon's price-point probably wont change much either way.
What's the difference to the authors and amazon?
Well if Amazon gets its way, it can make more money off of each e-book sale. If the author's get their way, they can make more money off each e-book sale.
So the question is: Which do you like more? The people that write the books or the people that sell you the books?
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If the author's guild isn't interested in what the end-user does, then they have no business talking about this. Amazon is selling text. At no point are they selling audio files. They happen to sell a device that will render text into sound, but as with my mp3 example, it's just a case of taking a format designed to reproduce audio and doing just that.
If Microsoft sold the end-user a device to convert text into speech, would Amazon be forced to pay for audio book rights? If some company built a device that
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You're talking about two different things.
To me, this is more like a publisher demanding a rental store pay full box price for full distribution rights for every xbox game rental because an end-user might have a hacked xbox and could pirate the game.
Amazon is selling text, not audio. The fact that the end user can take a device, even one made by amazon, and turn it into audio is irrelevant. Under that theory, every paper publisher should have to pay for audio book rights because all it takes is a scanner an
public v private (Score:5, Interesting)
I get that there should be an extra payment (and have made such license payments) if I want to display a DVD publicly, because a bunch of other people might not buy the movie if they can just go see it projected by me.
I have yet to see why Kindle reading a book takes bread from the mouths of authors and I don't see why celebrity audio-book readers should feel that they have any god-given monopoly on reading books aloud.
My Kindle (Score:5, Insightful)
My new Kindle has shipped from Amazon and will arrive any day. I'm planning to read Gutenberg books with it.
If Mr. Blunt is successful in getting Amazon to remove the text to speech feature from my Kindle, will he compensate me for the loss of use of something I paid for?
If prevents my Kindle from reading public domain books to me, then I expect a fucking check for a hundred bucks in my mailbox. Nothing less.
audio books are a performance (Score:3, Insightful)
In my town we have a group of experienced voice-readers who periodically perform reading books or plays in front of paying audiences. That effect is between a book and fully-staged play. Your imagination supplies the visual details. You can more easily concentrate on the words. You hear emotion and see it in the voice-reader's faces.
Perhaps talking text will evolve in the future. I anticipate a "voice-markup" annotation that might suggest emotion, tone, gender, etc. to the reading computer. Music and screenplays do such now. In the distance future an A.I. reading computer will be able to figure these out.
This directly parallels the hulu/boxee story (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people are saying that authors deserve to be paid for the audio. They're right. What they're forgetting, though, is that the authors are paid. Amazon paid for the e-book. The author whatever piece of that that they agreed would be fair. (Had they not agreed, all this talk about "copyright infringement" would be a hell of a lot less theoretical and Amazon's lawyers would already be scrambling and asking their client, "You did what?")
It's not Amazon's fault that the writers sell the e-book so cheaply compared to audiobooks, just as it's not hulu's or boxee's fault that the video content providers sell video with a web browser framed around it, more cheaply that the same exact video without the web browser framed around it.
Market segmentation is about fucking with people. Computers transforming the information you bought into a way that is easiest for you to use, is about getting un-fucked.
I vote for the computer.
Let's do a reality check (Score:5, Insightful)
Some books have special editions in large typeface, intended for people with eyesight impairments. These books are more expensive, because more paper is used in printing them.
According to the Authors Guild logic, using a magnifying glass with a normal print book should be illegal, because then one gets large typeface for free?
Re:Let's do a reality check (Score:5, Interesting)
According to the Authors Guild logic, if I read aloud a book to my 4 y.o. son, I should pay another license.
Nah, just kidding. I don't have a son.
Re:Let's do a reality check (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not so much reading to your own son, but should libraries now have to pay twice because, shockers, they often have reading programs for kids where a librarian will sit down and read a book to a dozen kids. Heck, what about the classroom, where teachers will read to twenty kids. What about book clubs?
The whole thing is nuts, and shows just how far mis-managed industries will go to preserve their sacred cows in the face not only of technology but of basic logic.
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Decent TTS in a widely-used device will basically kill the audiobook market, and authors should be compensated in some way for the revenue lost there. What's wrong with that?
No. They should not. Society moves on. Those left behind need to ask themselves why. Maybe they were never needed in the first place?
I see no reason AT ALL to ever protect dead markets OR the people who steadfastly insist to keep working in them.
Let them go down with their ship. It's their ship after all. It's their choice.
Re:Let's do a reality check (Score:5, Insightful)
Decent TTS in a widely-used device will basically kill the audiobook market, and authors should be compensated in some way for the revenue lost there.
Why? Nobody has a right to any specific revenue stream. If technology renders your business model obsolete, tough luck.
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Decent TTS in a widely-used device will basically kill the audiobook market, and authors should be compensated in some way...
This is only true if you assume that there are people out there who would buy both the eBook AND the audio book if there was no TTS. Otherwise eBook sales aren't causing a loss of sales in the audio book market, they are merely replacing those sales.
I own a few books as audio books (usually bought before a long drive somewhere), and even in the cases of the really good ones, I've never felt a burning desire to buy the book again in print.
Here's your reality check (Score:4, Interesting)
Decent TTS in a widely-used device will basically kill the audiobook market, and authors should be compensated in some way...
This is only true if you assume that there are people out there who would buy both the eBook AND the audio book if there was no TTS. Otherwise eBook sales aren't causing a loss of sales in the audio book market, they are merely replacing those sales.
I own a few books as audio books (usually bought before a long drive somewhere), and even in the cases of the really good ones, I've never felt a burning desire to buy the book again in print.
E-books sell for less than half to a quarter of audio book CD prices and fewer copies are sold. the ratio is enormous-- the Audio book market is 1000 times larger than the e-book market.
hence replacing 1-for-1 an audiobook with an e-book would cut the income by 1/2 or 1/4. Moreover if the author reads his own book, then his roylaties are even higher so the loss is maginified further.
you might wonder why then a publisher would be willing to sell if it represents a loss of revenue. The answer is that the e-book publisher and the audio book publisher are not the same person. the audio book publisher might be horrified that his sales are canialized by cheap e-baook sales, but from the e-book publisher's point of view it's a chance to expand their market 100 fold.
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E-books sell for less than half to a quarter of audio book CD prices and fewer copies are sold.
I don't believe this.
I can get almost every audio book for $9.99 each (though things like audible.com subscriptions), and I can't believe that equivalent eBooks are $2.50. A quick check shows that this is true, as eBooks are between $5-15, depending on the title. Compared to MSRP for CD-ROM audiobooks, the eBook might be 25%, but not to real-world prices for the content.
And, although audible.com does have DRM, the PC software they provide will burn a book to CD-ROM to turn it into a normal, non-MP3 audiob
Re:Let's do a reality check (Score:5, Insightful)
Decent TTS in a widely-used device will basically kill the audiobook market
Spoken like someone who isn't a fan of audiobooks.
When you're buying an audiobook, you're paying for more than just having the book read to you. The reader (well, the GOOD ones, anyway) inject personality into them. You won't get that out of TTS.
Given a choice between the likes of Nigel Planer (Discworld), Patrick Stewart and Kenneth Brannaugh(Chronicles of Narnia) or "Hello, My name is Kit." Yeah, buy the real one.
This is a cash grab, nothing more.
Re:Let's do a reality check (Score:4, Insightful)
When you're buying an audiobook, you're paying for more than just having the book read to you. The reader (well, the GOOD ones, anyway) inject personality into them.
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.
Re:Let's do a reality check (Score:5, Insightful)
Decent TTS in a widely-used device will basically kill the audiobook market
Ahh, no, it will probably not. Part of the bonus of listening to the audio book is the actual human narrator. Until the software can emulate the voices of some of the best readers around, including the actual author of the book, I will still prefer audiobooks when available.
authors should be compensated in some way for the revenue lost there. What's wrong with that?
Are you serious? With that logic, any company that has been put out of business by better technology and services should be compensated for their "lost revenue". Please, not every company needs to try the RIAA tactic when losing customers.
Re:Let's do a reality check (Score:4, Interesting)
Why should Amazon increase the fee when the publisher and author are not adding any value? Rather Amazon has added the value here at their own expense.
By having TTS capabilities, they have not eliminated the audiobook market but have combined the regular market with the audiobook market into one cohesive (e-book) market. This may reduce redundant sales (when someone buys multiple formats of the same basic product), but may also prevent market inefficiencies such as a person desiring one version of the product but not being able to find it due to stocking issues.
As it stands with regular books, a given person may have to buy the same basic product twice in order to have it in both a written and audio form. This may be worth it because the audiobook form has a special value above and beyond the book version, but fundamentally they are paying twice for the basic content. By enhancing the book, the publisher gets to charge more and this is the financial incentive to undertake the work. The only reason why they are able to charge more is because of the scarcity of the ability to create this product; most people do not have recording studios and access to persons with good speaking voices.
The Kindle (and similar technology) has removed that scarcity, and so the need to produce audiobooks will decline. However, it seems unlikely that it will entirely disappear, as there will be a difference between artificial and natural readers for some time to come.
Just because you were able to successfully exploit market demands for a while doesn't mean that you should be able to do forever regardless of technological progress. Should automobiles have a built-in horse whip tax in order to keep that industry afloat?
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Re:Let's do a reality check (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy has a perfectly reasonable point. Decent TTS in a widely-used device will basically kill the audiobook market, and authors should be compensated in some way for the revenue lost there.
Why? Copyright holders receive royalties on audiobooks because audiobooks are a derivative work. That makes sense. TTS technology is not a derivative work. It allows you to create a derivative work, but so do a pair of scissors.
You're right, TTS obviates the need for a derivative work, but that is not the same as actually being a derivative work. Copyright law doesn't exist to compensate authors for the fact that there's no longer demand for a derivative work. If they want to take that consideration into account when they set their licensing fees, fine, but honestly I don't even see how copyright law is implicated here.
Re:Let's do a reality check (Score:4, Insightful)
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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!
No - Not at all (Score:4, Insightful)
I know it is not fashionable to read the article or look at this from a different perspective, but Mr. Blount explicitly brought this issue up in the article. He said that providing such services to sight impaired people is something they have done for a long time and have no desire to end.
He is also not saying that this is a copyright violation. What he explicitly said is that the kindle creates extra value for the work. In return the people who created the material should share in that extra value.
It is fine to disagree with this statement. I personally think that market forces should determine the worth of the product. If you want to argue, though, you should argue against the points that he brought up instead of changing the subject and using a "straw man" argument.
Re:No - Not at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? They played no part and incurred no expense in creating that extra value, and unless the Kindle's speech is being recorded, there's no derivative work being fixed in a tangible medium, which was my understanding of what was required for a copyright claim. I suppose they could stretch and try to call it a "performance", but these guys really need to get a grasp on how greedy it's making the entire content creation industry look to everyone not involved in it.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And be ready with a credit card every time you hit the magnifying glass button in Acrobat Reader.
yeah, but... (Score:2)
I for one actually agree that you should not be able to buy one and get the other for free - they are fundamentally different.
When you buy an audio book on CD, you're paying for (among other things) the cost of production... hiring somebody to read the book, a sound studio to do the recording, the cost of mastering and pressing a set of CDs. That's how the higher price can be justified.
What the Kindle software does is essentially make the production cost of the audio zero (well, there's the cost of the software, but I'm simplifying things here).
What's to stop me as an individual from reading a book aloud and recording it for p
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You and your fellow Author's Guild members (and the RIAA) need stop thinking of 20 years in the past. You also ought to look at what copyright law says, and stop trying to nickle and dime everyone to death.
Licenses are for publishers, not end users. I don't licence a book, I buy a copy.
If I buy a paper book I can do any damned thing I want with it, including reading it aloud or putting it on a scanner and letting the scanner read it aloud.
Luddite cave men like you are the reason the major record labels and
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How many of those illiterate people do you think can afford a Kindle?
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The superposition between the illiterate and those buying TTS devices seems to me a bit smaller than 100%. More like 0%.
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In what sense is this a "performance"? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a rendering. Good God, are they going to try to charge if we choose to re-render it in a different font size? Are they missing out on millions in revenue by not charging for iTunes music visualizations, which are clearly "performances" of music in a different modality, and surely at least as deserving of copyright protection?
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Sure, a human-read book will be better, but as you say, that's often not available.
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