Amazon would selectively disable Text-To-Speech

Macworld reports that Amazon would allow copyright holders to disable text-to-speech feature which was introduced in 2nd generation Kindle. This seems to be part of the concession with the Authors Guild. Earlier this month Authors Guild accused Amazon that this feature infringes copyright and undermines the market for audio books. In it’s statement Amazon stated that the text-to-speech feature is legal, because no copy is made, no derivative work is created and no performance is given.

Well.. this seems to settle it. In my personal opinion text-to-speech was no threat to audio books because although much better than most voice synthesis systems I’ve experienced so far it still falls way short of professionally read audiobooks. It is also as much copyright infringement as me reading bed time stories to my daughter… But that’s just my personal opinion. It’s amazing what a law suit threat can do in a modern corporate world.

I just hope that few copyright holders would actually choose to exercise this ability to opt-out because this feature actually comes quite handy on long commutes when I don’t have any audiobook to listen to.