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Books The Courts United States

Top US Publishers Sue Amazon's Audible For Copyright Infringement (reuters.com) 39

Posted by msmash from the see-you-in-court dept.
Amazon's Audible was sued by some of the top U.S. publishers for copyright infringement on Friday, aiming to block a planned rollout of a feature called 'Audible Captions' that shows the text on screen as a book is narrated. From a report: The lawsuit was filed by seven members of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), including HarperCollins Publishers, Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, Simon & Schuster, and Macmillan Publishers. "Essentially Audible wants to provide the text as well as the sound of books without the authorization of copyright holders, despite only having the right to sell audiobooks," AAP said in a statement.
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Top US Publishers Sue Amazon's Audible For Copyright Infringement More

Top US Publishers Sue Amazon's Audible For Copyright Infringement

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  • Interesting Case (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Friday August 23, 2019 @02:53PM (#59117490)

    If the text comes from to book I can maybe see a problem.

    But if the text comes purely from speech recognition... can they really block it?

    • I've not used audible but if someone knows...

      I would imagine if it worked like captions on the TV and only shows the text as it's read and then disappears and can't be recalled with out playing the audio again I'm not sure there is much they can do. If that's the case then they should be going after any e-reader that also has text to speech.

      • e-readers don't have a license agreement, they're displaying content that the owner of the device owns a copy of. Clearly fair use.

        Here, a company with a license agreement is providing a tool for use with the licensed content that intentionally recreates the text that they didn't license. They don't own a copy, they just have a license.

        So I don't think that is likely to be a problem, except maybe if the e-reader included bundled audio content without text and also the text-to-speech. But it would only be a

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by suutar ( 1860506 )

          except that e-readers do have license agreements. [amazon.com] "Kindle Content is licensed, not sold, to you by the Content Provider."

          • And there are plenty of sources of content that are clear loans and not sales. Our library is member of a consortium that loans out digital versions of books. Overdrive, I believe it is. The uni library is a member of a different one. There can be no assumption of ownership of content by any app that reads you a book.
          • Don't some Kindles have a built-in reader? I assume you can upload MP3s to it, but I could also see it doing text-to-speech.
      • It's not that simple. THe captions have to come from somewhere. I don't understand why they don't include the book with the audio book. I listen to a lot of talks on youtube aand sometimes they use a word I don't know and have a lot of problems looking up, mostly just names though. I would like to see the word then. Still it seems dumb to have audiobooks that are closed captioned. What's the point of close captioning when they can just get the book.

    • Re:Interesting Case (Score:4, Interesting)

      by larryjoe ( 135075 ) on Friday August 23, 2019 @04:53PM (#59118320)

      If the text comes from to book I can maybe see a problem.

      But if the text comes purely from speech recognition... can they really block it?

      I'm not a lawyer, but my guess is that if my friend reads a book to me, and I listen and transcribe what I hear, I still can't sell my transcribed version of the book. It's still copyrighted. If that's not true, then essentially nothing can be protected via a copyright.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
        Amazon's not selling transcriptions, though.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by msauve ( 701917 )
        "copyrighted"

        Yep, you can't make a copy.

        But text from contemporaneous speech recognition isn't a copy, it's ephemeral. It's like sending a video stream across the Internet, through a Roku, through an AV receiver, to a TV and speakers. Technically, that's copying the content many, many times. e.g. a copy of the content contained in IP packets is made at each router it hits on the Internet, it's copied into the Roku's RAM, it's copied onto an HDMI cable, etc. It also ends up changing it's form, from bits

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jabuzz ( 182671 )

      With an audio book you have two sets of copyright. First the copyright of the text and second the copyright of the audio recording. They are entirely different things, so you can have a talking book version of Great Expectations that is not free to redistribute because while the text is long out of copyright (not that Americans ever cared about that for this book) the audio recording is not.

      If the text is being produced on the fly from a speech to text AI then the publishers are stuffed, Amazon (because Aud

  • Ok, I"m puzzled.

    If you are hearing impaired, why are you getting an audible book rather than a printed book (dead tree or electronic) in the first place?

    This doesn't make sense to begin with....even before you start trying to consider who owns the copyrights to what.

    • Re:Ok, if audible, why needing captions to begin w (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Friday August 23, 2019 @03:01PM (#59117556) Homepage Journal

      If you are language impared, having both the audio and the text is an excellent learning tool.

      • This. I still very much watch Dutch movies with subtitles on. It helps get parts varying accents and also improves spelling and reading speed.

    • Why are you assuming any sort of impairment in all this? There are times when listening to an audio book that I've thought it would be nice to see how something was spelled.

      I don't have much sympathy for publishers, who are being dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, but for Amazon, the solution is pretty simple: only display the text if the user also has the text rights. It seems pretty obvious to me that publishers would sue over this when they explicitly sell book text and audio

      • How this passed any sort of legal review is utterly beyond me

        They probably figure they can get a better deal by doing it and then negotiating a settlement than by trying to negotiate a deal from scratch where they have to pay a big entry fee to each publisher in addition to unfavorable terms.

        My guess, the publishers sued early enough in the process that this strategy will fail. But it depends on if the publishers secretly want a deal too, or not.

        • Maybe so, but if I bought both a Kindle e-book and its companion audio book, it seems like there should be nothing to stop Amazon from displaying the text along with the spoken voice. In fact, the Kindle app on my phone already does this, in a manner of speaking. The app will read the audio book and highlight the text in real-time as it's read.

          It's too brain-dead, legally speaking, to have been an oversight, so I guess it has to be deliberate. I just can't understand the strategy, other than "We'll just

          • Maybe so, but if I bought both a Kindle e-book and its companion audio book, it seems like there should be nothing to stop Amazon from displaying the text along with the spoken voice.

            Right, that has nothing to do with any of the situation here.

            This story is about companies that licensed the audio but not the text, who are then re-creating the text from the audio and displaying it.

      • Re:Ok, if audible, why needing captions to begin w (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Obfuscant ( 592200 ) on Friday August 23, 2019 @04:30PM (#59118154)

        There are times when listening to an audio book that I've thought it would be nice to see how something was spelled.

        Not just that, but solving the "what the hell did he say" question is another use.

        but for Amazon, the solution is pretty simple: only display the text if the user also has the text rights.

        Knowing that isn't as cut and dried as it seems. I buy an epub from one company, then the audiobook from Audible. How do I prove to Audible I have "text rights"?

        • Knowing that isn't as cut and dried as it seems. I buy an epub from one company, then the audiobook from Audible. How do I prove to Audible I have "text rights"?

          My wish would be for them to assume that if the e-book is on your Kindle device, then they should assume you have the rights to them. I legally own several DRM-free e-books that Amazon manages along with the books I bought from them. Of course, I'm sure the publishers would scream bloody murder at this, which is why I don't have a generally high regard for them either.

          More realistically speaking, at a minimum, Amazon could just check to see if you have both the Kindle and Audible versions. Not perfect, b

    • Having both the audio and the text can help with certain learning disabilities, like dyslexia & related disorders.

    • I have difficulty parsing the spoken word sometimes, particularly in noisy environments. Iâ(TM)m not deaf- in fact, my hearing sensitivity is past the capability of most testing machines to test.

      Captions in TV help me put the text to the spoken word, without needing to either lip read or go back constantly to infer the missed words from context (English is a pain to parse).

      Audiobook captions would be nice, as it would reduce the need for sound isolating headphones.

      • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

        by Aighearach ( 97333 )

        I have difficulty parsing the spoken word sometimes, particularly in noisy environments. Iâ(TM)m not deaf- in fact, my hearing sensitivity is past the capability of most testing machines to test.

        News flash: You're a big part of the noise in your environment. Turn that shit off, nobody can hear anything, not even if they had better than average hearing.

    • Yeah, I think the Americans With Disabilities Act would like to have a word with the AAP's here...

      • Yeah, I think the Americans With Disabilities Act would like to have a word with the AAP's here...

        I can't imagine that this is applicable here.

        If you are deaf....you have the book in written form.

        If you are blind, you have the audible version.

        If you are deaf and dumb, well, you're kinda fucked I guess, but what can you do about that?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jabuzz ( 182671 )

          I suspect that specific learning disabilities are also included. So someone who is dyslexic would qualify under the Americans With Disabilities Act. At least that is the case in the EU.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kaenneth ( 82978 )

      I don't use it, but from their ads my understanding is that Audible is a netflix-type subscription, where you have access to the whole catalog of audiobooks as long as you are subscribed.

      The publishers want to sell the writtenbook, but only rent the audiobook....

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dog-Cow ( 21281 )

        They want to rent the text version, too. There's just too much precedent for owning physical copies to get away with that in all contexts. For now.

  • Publishing companies are the reason why an e-book costs the same as a real, physical book. They only care about their profit margins. Hell, they'd prefer everyone buy e-books, as they make more money off of them. Same principal is applied here.

    • Lucky for me I only read web serials. And cheap self published claptrap that somehow is lower quality than many web serials.

  • Double-dipping (Score:3)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Friday August 23, 2019 @03:52PM (#59117898)
    If you buy a physical book, that entitles you to read it silently, and to read it aloud. So the single copyright license fee which covers ebooks should cover both the ebook and a narration of it. If they want to charge for the two separately, then to remain logically consistent they're gonna have to charge parents extra for reading a book aloud to their kids.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dpille ( 547949 )
      More accurately, copyright law generally doesn't allow you to read your copy aloud in public for commercial advantage. A license can say whatever the parties agree to, and could explicitly forbid you from reading your copy to your kids.

      You must have some pretty mercenary attitudes about parenting if you're reading to your kids for commercial advantage.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Agripa ( 139780 )

        More accurately, copyright law generally doesn't allow you to read your copy aloud in public for commercial advantage. A license can say whatever the parties agree to, and could explicitly forbid you from reading your copy to your kids.

        They would do that except for the problem of enforcement. But do not worry, the people earning money from copyright are working to solve that problem.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Don't give them ideas... Anyway, this is yet another example of why piracy is so much better than trying to pay for the damn thing.

  • Wondering if not doing this would put Audible in violation of the Americans with Disability Act or Accessibility Guideline rules.
    • Why? Dead tree publishers are under no obligation to produce audio versions of their works, so why should the reverse be required of Audible? Now, it could be argued that the publishers are in violation for preventing Audible from making their content accessible, I'd like to see the court rule on that.
  • Publishers need to protect their property, and if this isn't allowed in the contract they need to protect their rights. Hopefully they'll win the case and be awarded a dollar, and ensuing contracts will explicitly allow this. It's not costing them anything, and if they're losing any sales it's probably a minuscule number...how many people buy the audio and printed version of a book? Sure there's a few, but I expect it's VERY few.

  • Amazon has the money and publishers want some of it. That's the beginning and the end of any reason for this suit.

    • That was pretty much what I was going to say, pure push for more profit by publishers, nothing more, nothing less.

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