Now a braille kindle that would be crossing the lines and taking a market cut out of the Author’s Guild braille books.

Things change. Jobs evolve. I hope that these authors that are clinging to their business model are also standing in complete solidarity with the auto industry. Their union didn’t want anything to change, either, and here we are. And the newsprint business, I hope they’re doing everything that they can to save that.

Alternatively, you can deny fair use of the book by insisting on some shitty, clunky DRM system, but not only will that fare as well as DRM systems in the music industry (as well as those that you cite; sorry, but they really haven’t been effective, try reading some of Cory’s posts on this blog about them if you don’t want to seem foolish), but, frankly, it will discourage people from reading anything that you would publish in an electronic format. The convenience of distributing books via Kindle will more than make up for any theoretical loss of audiobook sales. It’s your decision.

e-books already have variable font size. By allowing a book to be sold in an electronic edition, the copyright owners are going to have to be OK with things like screen size modification, or if we decide it’s close enough to text size, then with (or color, or font) text-to-speech-synthesis.

Changing the font size on an ebook is not a violation of rights or a performance, so why is putting it into a speech-synthesis program?

I don’t think TTS is substantially different in the sense that a TV show or a play would be. It’s not “based” on the author’s work, it is the authors’ work, and putting the text into a speech synthesizer isn’t altering it, it’s simply reformatting it for the blind. It’s not even a translation into another language.

How do you think they will profit from this? I mean, how would you know if the customer buys the book to read or listen to? This audio feature will only help blind people too poor to buy real audio books, or who don’t have a good audio library near by. And who wants to tell a poor blind person, or some person who can’t read, that they shouldn’t listen to a book? Not me. I’d want to make sure my book DID have this option just to help those who really need it. It’s not all about the money, right?

Therefore it is not premature to establish a precedent in this area. If an author owns spoken-word rights, why shouldn’t he receive royalties from a large and profitable business such as Amazon, if Amazon sells a device that enables the text to be spoken?

I am fully aware of all the practical problems associated with this. But if it’s a matter of principle, I think the principle should be that writers should be able to protect their work. Whether they choose to do so is of course up to them.

Video game publishers protect their products successfully, much of the time. Satellite TV companies now protect their signals almost totally successfully, after a previous era in which weak encryption allowed rampant piracy. People can and do live uncomplainingly with DRM in some media.

I don’t see why text and spoken-word should be any different. It’s unfortunate that clueless entities such as RIAA have roused backlash to the point where the concept of defending one’s digital rights has become associated with litigious Luddites.

The audiobook industry is right to be worried. But they probably don’t stand a chance. Eventually release in different mediums will be as archaic as region codes.

You’ll buy the content. Which is the bit you want.

I’d say that to match audio books, the text would either need to be meta tagged with emotions that the text to speech could use, or the code would have to be advanced enough to read and understand the drama of what its reading.

And when computers can truly read and comprehend a story, audiobooks will be the least of the Authors guild’s problems. Because, chances are, computers will be generating interactive fiction to order.

This, at least, isn’t messy at all. Of course Amazon profits from it. It’s a heavily-promoted feature on a commercial product. They wouldn’t have incorporated/advertised the feature if they didn’t expect to profit.

And people: at least read Roy Blount’s article.

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. (The federation [for the blind], though, points out that blind readers can’t independently use the Kindle 2’s visual, on-screen controls.)

So this is in no way a disability matter.

Finally: no one who is “poor” by any tenable definition owns a Kindle. It is an upper-middle class luxury item.

Again, what TTS means is that ebooks are more valuable, and that authors/agents may want to negotiate contracts for electronic rights accordingly. The fact should certainly be reflected in future transactions between publishers and Amazon. It is understandable that owners of rights already sold would be miffed over having sold something more valuable than they realized, but attempts at legal recourse would probably be unwise and misguided.

TAKUAN:

My understanding is that the Library of Congress is accessible to anyone, but it may take several rounds of appointments, etc. for the layman. Professional researchers have it a few shades easier.

In practice, I doubt many works become more (rather than less) obscure through the sale of rights. Though there were interesting discussions on persistence of copyright, obscurity, and public domain in the Conan thread the other day.

Yeah, in twenty years only five percent of the population will be able to read anything more nuanced than a street sign. Then the Author’s Guild will be suing Amazon for Kindle XXIII including software that converts audiobooks to print.

The creation and selling of those CDs is illegal under curent copyright law. They are derivative works created without a license from the copyright holder.

Those opposing Blount’s argument are saying that TTS does not create a derivative work. They are correct.

@ Hallowen Jack, #34:

You’re conflating the Doctrine of First Sale: “Well, I think that the principle is that, once you sell me a book, that book is mine. If I want to turn around and resell it to someone else, that’s my right. If I want to lend it out to others, either by donating it to a library…”

with creating a derivative work:
“… or sending it out via an online book-sharing Web 2.o thingy, that’s my right.”

Otherwise, you’re correct. I’m replying to you ‘cos you’re another who replied to Poor Charles. Here I thought he’d so fallen from grace that none here would deign to reply…

I don’t think TTS is substantially different in the sense that a TV show or a play would be. It’s not “based” on the author’s work, it is the authors’ work, and putting the text into a speech synthesizer isn’t altering it, it’s simply reformatting it for the blind. It’s not even a translation into another language.

Avoiding the issue of ADA/blind access for the moment…

If I built a robot that could read books out loud to whomever would listen, and then I bought a book and gave it to the robot to read, would that be like a Kindle’s TTS? If I charged money for the service would I be infringing?

I’ve bought the book, right? The purchase of a book comes with some rights, though I’m sure Amazon EULAgizes their ebooks up the butt to make Kindle-owners little more than book-renters, but still…it’s a book, more or less, and you have some limited protections in how you use it. So I give it to the robot and collect my money.

The “product” is not just the book, however — text-on-page which I’ve purchased — it’s the book plus the speaking robot, which I’m selling to make a buck. It’s derived from the original work, but I only had a license for the original. I’m not allowed to sell what I make of it unless I’ve substantially transformed it, plus like three other bits of fair use vaguery.

Or I can negotiate for the additional right to robot performances…for a bit of coin, maybe. That’s just how I see it, to be Blount.

The real point is that you have to look at the future. Sure, right now its all monotone robotic voice. But compare the text2speech on the kindle right now to Wargames back in the day. Huge difference. Now extrapolate that to 10 or 20 years from now. It’s a pretty safe bet 10 or 20 years from now the monotone robotic voice will be indistinguishable from a human reading the story. If you think otherwise you are not paying attention.

If you’re paying so much attention then you must have noticed that computer speech today is virtually indistinguishable from computer speech 20 years AGO. Barring incredible advances in AI (as in, the ability to parse metaphors and accurately interpret the emotional content of text) it’s not going to get all that much better.

Of course, the quality of the technology is beside the point anyway. The point is that I should be able to experience the book I’ve purchased in any way I see fit.

You might know what you’re talking about, but you probably do not. You’re lucky these people are so bloody polite.

Self-deprecating commentary, meet epic fail. I’m out.

le sigh

The ‘slippery slope’ argument is just *wierd*, considering the unlikelihood that this technology will ever challenge authors’ own readings of their work: the first barrier is having a voice that flows well enough to really sound like human speech. That’s the only part that’s remotely foreseeable. It’ll hurt the market for totally flat, uninspired readings. There are enough of those in audiobooks that the industry will surely feel it, but protecting crap from even-more-cheaply-produced crap is hardly a cause to champion.

To do any better than a listenable but emotionally void reading will take human-like AI. And then, to finally compete with a good voice actor, that human-like AI will need human experience (real or simulated) to provide any depth of understanding of what it’s reading.

Even after we’re that far into science fiction, the authors’ own reading is untouched because only the author knows exactly what was going on in his or her head when the story went down on paper. That’s why I and many others will always take an audiobook from the author over another reader… There’s always the chance that you’ll pick up some nuance from the reading that didn’t come across in print, and when it comes from the original author you know that that extra tidbit is an authentic part of the story.

So basically the only group the Authors’ Guild DON’T stand to protect here, no matter how much benefit of the doubt you give them, are the actual authors.

With regard to the post: this issue should die a quick death. No one will be able to listen to that machine voice for long. I lasted 25 seconds and switched it off. Humans want to hear human voices read to them and we’re a long way from that.

Listening to Gutenberg books probably works the best, but as you are sitting there, you have some really weird pronunciation which makes you go “What???” and the concentration on the story turns into concentration on the alien sitting there trying to decipher human creations. It’s still quite disconcerting and breaks the storytelling something aweful.

The 16k voices are a lot better, the pronunciation is a lot better, but not the same thing as a voice actor tuned to the story he’s reading.