For those of you who are outraged (as I am) to discover that the Authors' Guild believes that a piece of software that can read an ebook aloud infringes copyright by "performing" the work as an audiobook, here's Neil Gaiman being unbelievably sensible on the subject.
When you buy a book, you're also buying the right to read it aloud, have it read to you by anyone, read it to your children on long car trips, record yourself reading it and send that to your girlfriend etc. This is the same kind of thing, only without the ability to do the voices properly, and no-one's going to confuse it with an audiobook. And that any authors' societies or publishers who are thinking of spending money on fighting a fundamentally pointless legal case would be much better off taking that money and advertising and promoting what audio books are and what's good about them with it.
What he said, but with no-severance layoffs for anyone who is blowing potential marketing dollars for audiobooks on pursuing this fool's errand. The Authors' Guild is hell-bent on convincing the world that ripping off authors is OK, because we're a bunch of greedy jerks like the record industry.
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- Authors Guild sues Google over print program – Boing Boing
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- Writers, publishers and board members of Authors Guide speak out …
