Author's Guild Says Kindle's Text-To-Speech Software Illegal 683
Mike writes "The Author's Guild claims that the new Kindle's text-to-speech software is illegal, stating that 'They don't have the right to read a book out loud,' said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. 'That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.' Forget for a moment that text-to-speech doesn't copy an existing work. And forget the odd notion that the artificial enunciation of plain text is equivalent to a person's nuanced and emotive reading. The Guild's claim is that even to read out loud is a production akin to an illegal copy, or a public performance."
Wow, kicking blind people. A new low (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely Ridiculous. (Score:5, Insightful)
All this revolves around are audio books sales. Forget the fact that right now synthesized text to speech is painful to listen vs a human voice, this is just another case of technology slowly making one industry obsolete.
They might as well sue teachers or those libraries that offer children's programs by reading a book out loud.
They say nothing makes more problems than solutions, and I feel the concept of intellectual property taking this to extreme.
Voice Web Browsers (Score:5, Insightful)
Accessibility, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
It may once have been but is not now (Score:4, Insightful)
Before the days of IT technology producing sound from text required a performance.
Now sound from text is a programmed translation. No more different or complex than the rendering of the book PDF information on the screen.
Welcome to the information age. Data is data and rendering translations are done all over the place, ascii to display bits. HTML to display. GIF, JPEG to images, MPEG to sound, MPEG to video. ascii, pdf or html to sound is no more difficult or complex. Just a little newer.
Not what it looks like (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sitting here thinking that no lawyer could possibly be dumb enough to advise their client with this legal theory. Even if we accept this concept at face value (which it does have some value related to public performances and derivitive works), fair use throws a huge monkey wrench into any potential lawsuits. Courts have repeatedly held up that once you are sold a copy of a product, you are entititled to privately do whatever you want with it. That includes space and time shifting. Text to speech is just another type of space shifting. i.e. Moving from one medium to another.
Then I realized that there's no way Mr. Aiken is serious about these threats. He's posturing in an attempt to force Amazon to rethink the text-to-speech in light of their audio book business. This becomes especially clear based on the response from an Amazon spokesperson:
So never fear! The world isn't quite upside down yet. This is just business as usual. Someone's trying to play a weak hand and hopes the other side folds. (Good luck with that.)
Re:To hell with them! (Score:4, Insightful)
"To hell with all of them. I'll read quietly, or out loud when ever I please. And just for being assholes, I'm going to pirate the next book published by a guild author. And I'm going to listen to Microsoft Sam read it to me. And I'm going to pretend to like it."
It might hit them harder if you gave your attention instead to people who respected you more.
drew
--
http://zotz.kompoz.com/ [kompoz.com]
Re:To hell with them! (Score:3, Insightful)
The major problem with this suit is that Amazon isn't producing audio books of other people's works and selling them as derivative works. It's letting people access the content they paid for in a different way.
This lawsuit deserves to fail and the author's guild should pay the legal fees of amazon and the court as well for this idiocy.
Epic battle incoming... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ladies and gentlemen! A full-contact legal battle for the ages!
In this corner, we have the Author's Guild, with the full weight of American copyright law behind them.
And in this corner, we've got the National Federation for the Blind, swinging a big stick: the Americans with Disabilities Act!
Gentlemen ... FIGHT!
Re:To hell with them! (Score:5, Insightful)
How do they respond to the ADA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:To hell with them! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, I couldn't see that they should change at all.
Millions of kids read their kids bed time stories, many elderly people like to have stories read to them, why should a machine doing it suddenly require a whole new licensing regime? Or if this is already illegal then there's already something severely messed up with the laws surrounding written works.
They should be happy, it means blind people can also now buy books and get some use out of them.
Re:To hell with them! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To hell with them! (Score:5, Insightful)
The closest example I can think of is buying a Harry Potter book and reading it to your kids.
As one of my old bosses used to say so frequently, "Fuck you, sue me."
If it is a public performance... (Score:3, Insightful)
If the copyright claim is based on a public performance, then the person who must be sued in the lawsuit is the performer, because they are the ones infringing on the copyright. In this case, the performer is the kindle itself.
If the kindle is the performer, as an entity without legal status, then the responsible party would be the owner of the entity, in this case, the customer. NOT Amazon.
Re:To hell with them! (Score:2, Insightful)
IANAL, but I'd imagine the purpose of the read out loud right is to protect playwrights from having people perform their plays without permission or compensation. In that context, it makes sense. In the context of a text to speech computer intended for personal use, it makes no sense.
Sure, if someone starts hooking their Kindle up to a PA system and staging public performances of an electronic reading of someone's book, I could see an issue. However, the device itself having the ability to read text back is not in itself any kind of violation.
Exactly. This is the same as saying parents are violating copyright laws if they read aloud bedtime stories to their children at night. Two people are getting the benefit of one book simultaneously, oh my!! This claim is equivalent to saying that all us parents will (legally) have to purchase two copies of each children's book, one for us and one for the child. Oh, and a third copy if we have two children or our SO happens to be in the room too.
Preposterous. IP represents an idea or concept, it shouldn't matter what form it takes, it's the message that's copyrighted, not the medium. I don't mind the concept of IP, but when IP proponents want their cake and to eat it too, that's greed run amok.
Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:To hell with them! (Score:3, Insightful)
Make more money for the Authors' Guild. This has absolutely nothing to do with authors, writers, publishers, editors, or anyone who reads books. This is solely the money-grabbing greed of Paul Aiken and his cronies.
You clearly have no understanding of what the Authors' Guild is. It's merely an organization to represent it's member authors. The AG makes no more or less money however many books are sold or in any format. Members pay their flat dues and that's it.
The AG clearly feels they are representing what their members want. That may or may not be correct, but it has nothing to do with the organization's finances or any cronyism.
Re:To hell with them! (Score:3, Insightful)
You can't space-shift a DRM laiden product, because that requires breaking the encryption, which is against the DMCA.
Maybe, maybe not. That portion of the DMCA is, shall we say of questionable legality and enforceability, much like the EULA (IANAL BTW, not legal advice, ask a lawyer, yada yada yada). We're rather quickly approaching the point at which a serious legal challenge is going to come up against some of the more brain dead provisions of things like the DMCA and I really don't know which way things are going to fall. I rather hope fair use and the rights of the consumer triumph (not to mention common sense), but I can easily see things going the opposite direction as well.
I have a suggestion (Score:5, Insightful)
Basic suggestion: get 50 people. Go to the "Author's Guild" offices, stage a sit-in, and everyone start reading some book aloud.
To make it REALLY funny, make it a freely-available Creative Commons book. Maybe Free Culture [free-culture.org] by Lessig.
Re:To hell with them! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:To hell with them! (Score:5, Insightful)
Three reasons spring to mind:
* Discrimination against blind users
* Disregard for fair use in copyright law
* Dinosaur-like worldviews
* Dinosaur-like brains
Re:To hell with them! (Score:5, Insightful)
Realistically, I think they are worried about audio book sales. I know lots of commuters that churn through a lot of audio books. The read-aloud feature of the Kindle might make a dent in those sales.
I don't think they are on very good legal ground - we shall see.
Re:To hell with them! (Score:1, Insightful)
Wow, I am glad to hear that you are a lawyer.
Oh wait, you probably are not a lawyer.
So, while you have great ideas about the law, you ultimately do not know the law.
Space Shifting is a form of derivative work. Text to Speech COPIES the work into RAM, which in law is considered a physical space, which then pushes the work through several algorithms to output it through an audile medium rather than the originally intended visual medium. This transition represents a form of copying and derivative work. The author's copyright protects the original from duplication or derivation - outside of first sale and fair use doctrines. This is an instance near the line of whether or not it is fair use. However, typically under fair use this would not be considered a civil violation [keep in mind, it is not necessarily illegal] because Amazon is enabling you to create a derivative of the work. While you may be allowed to do this on your own, it is Amazon's process of disablement of copying for purposes not conceived under the first sale doctrine and creation of a derivative work not considered within the original license and sale. QED - Civil Violation.
Illegal? Nah. It would be pretty hard to call this illegal under current laws.
Re:To hell with them! (Score:3, Insightful)
You will need to read to them a copyright notice before starting each book, just like you get on DVD's. Hopefully they won't fall asleep, or start crying in fear, before you finish the 10 minute spiel.
Steven Hawking edition (Score:4, Insightful)
No I paid extra to have Stephen Hawking read the book.
I think the point here is that what current text to voice converters are ghastly, this will not always be the case. In the future you will be able to have Marylin Monroe or John F. Kennedy read your book outloud and it will sound exactly right.
They are selling the book in a DRM form precisely so they can split the reading rights from the voice rights. Ideally they can make more profit that way. You are free to buy it in both forms. You might not like that but if there is competition in the market one can presume an efficient market can deliver each at a lower cost as a result of the extra profit to be made. So in theory it could benefit the consumer. And indeed the DRM versions are cheaper than than the print version in many cases.
You might object to that because it seems like you lost some traditional right of ownership. But until people invented text -to voice converters you never missed this did you? it's only when this became possible that you noticed that they did not want you to do it. so it's not a traditional right. Moreover, if you read the book out loud yourself then sold the recornding you would have been sued.
SO they do have a point.
The place where it goes off the rails is if you use this to listen to the book with no intention of reselling the voice conversion. What's wrong with that? DOn't you "own" it.
I think the answer is that, it's not you that committed the infringement, it's Amazon for making it possible. Afterall amazon sells both forms written and audio. Now they are selling both for the price of the DRM written version. You can see why the booksellers are mad.
Re:To hell with them! (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that the creator of the DRM puts in this feature and it operates within the limitations of the DRM. The encryption is never broken because it's an approved use.
The problems with DRM come in when you think up a way to use your media that they didn't think up first.
Re:To hell with them! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot Bedtime Stories, Volume 1 (Score:5, Insightful)
That's all wrong. In Soviet Russia, a big bowl of hot grits had Natalie Portman.
copyright wars (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:To hell with them! (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no issue. If I have a contract which allows me to sell frozen burritos, but not ready-to-eat burritos, selling frozen burritos along with a microwave (which turns them into ready-to-eat burritos) doesn't violate the contract.
Re:To hell with them! (Score:3, Insightful)
But Amazon isn't distributing the book as audio. They're distributing text. The Kindle, in the user's hands, is turning that text into audio, without any distribution happening.
Amazon just happens to be selling the Kindle, but also sells the text, so it's possible to get confused about what Amazon is doing (the user buys text and experiences audio, so one can mistakenly believe that someone distributed audio to them). If someone else sold Kindles instead of Amazon, then the same situation (user buys text and experiences audio) could happen without the guild being able to confuse anyone into believing that audio is being distributed.
Re:To hell with them! (Score:4, Insightful)
As someone with Dyslexia and cannot easily follow a straight line with my eyes. Reading books for any long period of time is very exhausting to me. Using text to speech even the old ones, is very helpful to let me get the information from the book.
I am fine reading reference or quick lookup for information but for books it very stressful. Having something like the kindle that speaks the text would be a good feature for people like me. And it is not a performance it is a handycap device. That allows information to go into my minds eye. A performance is skipping the minds eye step and giving the persons perception, of the information in the way they want it to be perceived.
Re:To hell with them! (Score:4, Insightful)
Be that as it may, I'd like to put the problem at the point where someone decided to sell separate text and audio contracts in an age where speech synthesis is common place. In other words, the contract is wrong to begin with.
Re:To hell with them! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:To hell with them! (Score:2, Insightful)
The authors do not a problem with the reader translating a book aloud, but they have a problem with someone they have a contract with to sell text-only versions of a work (and with whom they have separate audio version contracts) selling text plus audio versions. It is a contract issue.
There's no issue. If I have a contract which allows me to sell frozen burritos, but not ready-to-eat burritos, selling frozen burritos along with a microwave (which turns them into ready-to-eat burritos) doesn't violate the contract.
Even if your analogy -- that cooking a burrito is akin to creating a derivative work -- is a good one, there is no law that gives a burrito-maker exclusive rights to derivative works based on his burrito. The author of a book does have that right, and absent a contract that waives this right, I don't see how this is as clear cut as you claim.
Re:Fact vs. Flame (Score:4, Insightful)
A performance is *not* a copy. Under 17 U.S.C. 101, a copy is a *material object*. It also has to be "fixed," which (again S. 101) means the copy has to exist for "more than a transitory duration."
No derivative work is created here, either because the creation of a work means fixing it in a copy or phonorecord, neither of which is happening here.
Tepples already addressed your public performance point, so I won't reiterate that.
Re:To hell with them! (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not even distributing it as text. They are distributing it as a modulated electronic signal which the kindle stores, interprets and displays as text.
Re:To hell with them! (Score:2, Insightful)
Really interesting point. In copyright law this would likely amount to an authorization of copyright violation by Amazon. So Amazon and the ultimate consumer who made the violation would be jointly liable. Given Amazon's deep pockets, they'd be the real target for any action, not the consumer.
AFAIK there are separate copyrights for audio recordings and public performances. I'm not sure if reading text aloud from a digital book would actually qualify as a recording, because of the way the sounds are produced - generated on the fly on a per-word basis (which would likely not qualify for sound recording copyright by itself). In contrast, an audiobook would clearly be a sound recording because the entire thing is pre-recorded, unlike digital read-outs.
Reading to your kids is fair use. Reading out loud to others is fair use so long as there's no public performance (IN public).
It is true that any "reproduction" of a copyright work is a violation of copyright. However, there is a great deal of litigation on what constitutes a "reproduction." AFAIK reproduction requires fixation: the resultant "reproduction" must have some fixed or permanent form. IF, as discussed above, the audio words are generated on the fly and are not pre-recorded, the read out would probably not constitute as "fixed" and therefore not a reproduction.
Just some hypotheses from my basic copyright law knowledge.
Mmm... burritos (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no issue. If I have a contract which allows me to sell frozen burritos, but not ready-to-eat burritos, selling frozen burritos along with a microwave (which turns them into ready-to-eat burritos) doesn't violate the contract.
It seems the GP was actually saying that there is a contract for frozen burritos AND ready-to-eat burritos. And by Amazon selling frozen burritos along with a microwave, they are somehow skirting their contract for selling ready-to-eat burritos. How valid that is, who knows? Something tells me that a judge will know, at some point.
Why the Guild's Position is in Our Best Interests (Score:5, Insightful)
Currently, a mid-level author has several payment streams potentially -- one from the books themselves and one from audio recordings. The Kindle threatens to eliminate one of those payment streams. Will the world really be better off if writers get paid less than they already are?
I think the Guild is doing exactly what any membership organization should do -- advocate for its members.
Re:To hell with them! (Score:5, Insightful)
Shhhhh: nobody tell them about text-to-braille [google.ca].
Re:Slashdot Bedtime Stories, Volume 1 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not actually the closest example. (Score:5, Insightful)
That makes no sense, and has nothing to do with the matter at hand. This has nothing to do with "public performances," and is actually about "derivative works." Two TOTALLY different things. Did you even read the article? Because it's quite clear that the argument is about audio derivatives, not public performances, and your claim doesn't even really make much sense if you consider the legal definition of "public performance."
To clarify and educate; the Author's Guild is claiming that the Kindle's text-to-speech feature effectively is creating audio "derivative works," whenever it's employed, and copyright law reserves the right to audio derivatives for the author. This has nothing to do with public performances, and I don't know where you got that idea.
Re:Why the Guild's Position is in Our Best Interes (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know that that's particularly relevant. It's likely that people don't buy both the electronic and the audio versions of a book, so if someone buys the ebook to play it out loud, they're probably buying it because it was cheaper than the audiobook, not because they wanted both and were getting two for one.
Yes, audiobooks might be more expensive than ebooks. Couldn't this just be a market force driving down the price of audiobooks?
Re:To hell with them! (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably because they can think 10 years into the future.
Re:To hell with them! (Score:4, Insightful)
Never mind the people with a low level of literacy who could benefit from a speaking machine that highlights words to help correlate the sound with the written image. Or those people learning a foreign language with a different writing system than their own native language. The capitalist pig dogs must make a buck any which way they can.
Re:To hell with them! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the strongest reason for casting the authors guild into the darkest depth of hell. There is a tremendous problem getting books in audio format for blind people. The Kindle breaks that barrier. The authors guild are not just greedy they also want to discriminate against blind people. They are well on their way to achieving the status of bank executives.
Re:To hell with them! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Obviously it does! (Score:3, Insightful)
This shouldn't be modded funny. It is funny, but there's probably a 50% chance of it actually happening.
Just examine the DRM in Vista. It downgrades video quality if your videocard or monitor isn't HDCP compatible? :/ Honestly...
This is exactly the kind of thing they'd come up with and implement. It sounds ludicrous now, but in 3 years time it won't.
Authors are very well compensated. (Score:3, Insightful)
The Guild may actually have the more "just" position. Authors, with the exception of that rare 1 percent of best sellers, are not particularly well compensated. They do it because they love the profession and have some uncomfortable compulsion that makes them write, despite a average hourly salary measure in pennies.
Probably the same compulsion that drives lots of people to participate in various creative fields who just plain suck at it. LA is full of bad "actresses". Bars across the country are full of bad musicians - hell, some of them even charge cover to let bad singers sing! And don't forget bad artists....
People like to be creative. It's fun. But you don't get paid for doing something creative - you get paid for doing something creative that other people are willing to pay for.
And if nobody wants to pay for it, well, that doesn't mean you're poorly compensated. It just means you're producing crap.