Another day, another potentially disruptive technology called out by conservative and fear-mongering industry groups. Paul Aiken, director of the Author’s Guild, is calling the Kindle 2’s text-to-speech system a form of copyright transgression in that it essentially creates an audiobook, albeit automatically. From the WSJ:
“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.”
An Amazon spokesman noted the text-reading feature depends on text-to-speech technology, and that listeners won’t confuse it with the audiobook experience. Amazon owns Audible, a leading audiobook provider.
