Infingement. That’s what Blount called Amazon’s text-to-speech feature.
Roy Blount, Jr., president of the Authors Guild, wrote an op-ed in the NYT today about the Kindle 2’s text-to-speech feature. Heavens to Betsy – we’re still talking about this?
I’m a writer. I’m writing a book. I want lots of sales and money. But I understand that technology is moving far faster than Blount and his buddies care to accept. The text-to-speech function on the Kindle 2 is just one of the features that will be included in an ebook reader from now until the end of time – it will never make sense not to embed one in the future. It doesn’t infringe on audiobook sales unless you’re crazy and dedicated enough to record the Kindle reading an entire book and then copy that MP3 file onto an iPod. At that point you can theoretically say you’re creating a homebrew audio book.
This is a slippery slope that doesn’t need traversing. What really needs to change are contracts in regards to electronic editions as well as a plan to slow the decline in reading in general. Rather than finding high-profile windmills to tilt, the Guild needs to assist in the publishing process by perhaps offering more than their stated services:
Members of the Authors Guild receive free book contract reviews from experienced legal staff, discounted health insurance rates in some states, low-cost website services including website-building, e-mail, and domain name registration, access to our free Back in Print service, our quarterly print Bulletin, and invitations to panels and programs throughout the year.
Website services? Insurance? If you’re a published author with any sense, your have those things already. If not, you have a position at a university or a day job. Otherwise you’re not a published author. *ducks*
Most interestingly, however, they offer a Back-in-Print service that essentially mirrors, in dead-tree form, what they just sued Google for doing, albeit with “the little guy” in mind. Their main point is trying to get authors with out of print books and whose rights haven’t lapsed a little cash i.e $2.99 or so for online access to books. But Google’s book search is about the long tail, not about books sold in the past few years. No one will get revenue on older books except Google.
This organization fights for authors rights without understanding technology. Google will give them all sorts of concessions because Google knows that offering $2.99 for Ida Franklin’s 1977 tome My Husband Cheated on Me So I Wrote Poetry from The Midwood Community College Press of Midwood, Illinois, print run 1,000, isn’t going to sell copy one and is a wash. Again, I wants to get paid, but I know that I’ll get paid through the sale of physical books for a few months and then through the sale of ebooks for eternity or until I die. Maybe I’ll record an audiobook and maybe someone will listen to my book on the Kindle but what matters here is convincing the world to read the book, not figuring out barriers to fair use.
I feel bad for members of some of these guilds and unions. They really have no choice but to join them and then the unions screw both them and us.
how are they screwing you? Because now you actually need to read a book as opposed to be lazy and have it read to you like a kid? or because this means that you actually need to do some research into whose feet you are stepping on before releasing a product?
Actually my reply was more or less an all-encompassing reply to ALL guilds and unions. Either way, this is the dumbest fight in the world. Mrs. Roboto voice lady reading the book to me would sound nothing like the author… unless the author was a robot.
Neil Gaiman has this to say about the kindle’s text-to-speech:
“When you buy a book, you’re also buying the right to read it aloud, have it read to you by anyone, read it to your children on long car trips, record yourself reading it and send that to your girlfriend etc. This is the same kind of thing, only without the ability to do the voices properly, and no-one’s going to confuse it with an audiobook. And that any authors’ societies or publishers who are thinking of spending money on fighting a fundamentally pointless legal case would be much better off taking that money and advertising and promoting what audio books are and what’s good about them with it.”
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/02/quick-argument-summary.html
Exactly. It makes a difference that the Kindle’s speech synthesizer sounds like crap. Sure, it may sound good for a speech synthesizer but it still sounds like crap.
Really? Didn’t what technology do to the rest of the entertainment industry justify these actions. they are only trying to save their own asses so we can continue to read good stories for years to come. Not to mention as a tech blog, you have no idea how this really affect these authors. this will could have affect licencing for movies, tv, the audio books, etc. No wonder the entertainment industry is where it is if the people in the know in the tech industry just force things through without thinking beyond today. Look at the economy, I think if anything this proves that we need to look further into the future, although history shows that we probably won’t.
What did technology do to the rest of the entertainment industry?
Oh, right. I remember when home taping killed radio, which had already killed the record industry. No, wait, the VCR was like the Boston Strangler and killed the movie industry, a neat trick since television had already killed it a few decades earlier. Nielsen’s recent report that TV viewing is at an all-time high is clear evidence that those Internet pirates have slaughtered the TV industry.
Yes, technology killed the entertainment industry.
The movie industry used to make all their money on theater releases. Then VHS came out, and now they don’t make all their money on theater releases.
They make all their money on DVDs.
We *CAN* learn from the past that people *WILL* use technology, weather they’re “allowed” to or not.
The authors guild can find new ways to make money (possibly even more than they have before. *gasp*) or they can threaten the people that should be their best allies.
For the sake of authors everywhere, I hope that you, Brad, either get a clue or stop spreading your FUD.
As a disability services provider, I’ve fought these stupid battles for years. People who don’t NEED text-to-audio aren’t likely to USE text-to-audio. The voice you will hear on such a device is not human. Technology has come a long way and the voices are getting better and better, but they are not human. You will be listening to an electronic voice in a nice solid monotone that is just a thrill (NOT) to listen to for any length of time. For those that need text-to-speech, it is a Godsend, but for everyone else, it is not that great a thing. And it is not infringement. As a writer myself, I am not interested in how people read and/or listen to my work, as long as they are reading and/or listening to my work.
Right, but you probably don’t sell more than a few copies of your book and maybe don’t even have a publisher. This is like the indy band praising file sharing to get their music out there while the established band (you know the one that keeps the industry afloat) is pissed about it.
Dude, seriously, do you think you stand a chance of keeping tech from encroaching on your world? In the long run you will evolve, or die. The longer you wait to embrace it the less time you have to figure out a way to work with tech and hence you will be at a disadvantage to those that got it from the beginning. For examples please look at the Movie, Music and Newspaper industries, do you really want to go down that same path only to have to evolve at the end anyway? Time wasted is never recovered.
By the way, what books have you HAD published? Name them or STFU.
What I wonder is what happens when TTS *IS* good enough to replace audiobooks, as is inevitable? Then, if we’ve already established the precedent that TTS is not an infringement, then audiobooks…go away?
Finally someone with a brain commenting here.
you know thinking more than ten seconds into the future.
Dear Brad,
If now, or in the future, a robot voice is an adequate substitute for a human actor, then you know what? Time for audiobook readers to find another job. Time for authors to step up to the plate and make something (additional) of value to earn their keep.
No one has the fundamental RIGHT to earn money from a particular activity. Technology moves on. The world moves on. Please stop trying to stop time.
If you are selling me a pirated machine reading of a book, it’s infringement. If I’m having a robot read it it to me at full blast in my living room, it’s not. Plain and simple. It’s not the tool that’s infringing, it’s the person. I can buy the ebook and have it read, projected on my wall, or laser etched into steel.
Dude, you’re a moron.
“What I wonder is what happens when TTS *IS* good enough to replace audiobooks, as is inevitable?”
Show me a machine programmed to recognize the description of an emaciated, wild-haired stranger, with several teeth missing and a patch over one eye that just burst into the Arabian bar begging for someone to phone the police, and produce the voice with any accents, word emphasis and strain in the right place and I’ll show you a machine capable of becoming Skynet.
Skynet can’t do that.
While such machines do not exist now, they may in the future sometime. The question is, if and when they do exist, is it then infringement?
I don’t remember who said it first, but it’s true here as well: it’s not about money, it’s about control. There’s a parallel between the current mindset among old-school content producers and the small subset of old people that seem generally bothered by the world. They both feel their sphere of influence shrinking and they lash out with an accusatory finger at everything in sight. Instead, they should be investigating the real source of their “problem”–the fact that the market doesn’t want to compensate them unless they provide real value.
I’m not talking about the authors themselves. They’re not typically the ones with any power. I’m referring to the publishers and the guild. Their once-valuable service has been made obsolete and now they’re screaming about how unfair life is and how *somebody* must have committed some heinous crime that forced them into their current downward spiral.
Think of it like a group of dinosaurs pooling their resources to sue the mammals for grazing infringement. The real cause of the dinosaurs’ problems problems are the environment (the market) and evolution (innovation). Unfortunately, an organism (or organization) in the throws of death is often pretty annoying to anything unlucky enough to find itself in the general vicinity. A dying dinosaur crushes the surrounding vegetation. A content distributor in the twilight of its years tries to consume both artists/authors and consumers.
Another industry with an appetite for self-destruction due to fear and non-understanding of technological solutions http://tinyurl.com/af5ly8
this isn’t a solution so much as a new product that is almost as useless as the laser disc. Tell me why the world needs this or why you feel this is a “solution”? Also, what is this a “solution” to? all it is as far as I can see is a new way to present a book and a way to make book and audio book one entity. Nothing more, nothing less.
For you people who can’t carry one extra book in your bag on a trip or to work go to the gym because you guys are pretty week. I think maybe I’ll write a book about transplanting you guys back 100 years and see how you fair. Like Army of Darkness kind of thing, I think it’ll turn out a bit different though.
So let me see if I get this, Brad:
- You don’t like the Kindle.
- You think text-to-speech is useless.
(that means it must be no threat, now or later, to trained actors reading books, right?)
- And you want people to go back and commune with nature. AND GET OFF YOUR LAWN!
Am I right?
No I could care less about my lawn and whether you like nature or not. I think text to speech needs to be addressed because it may have potentially disastrous effects. As someone mentioned, eventually text to speech will evolve to be much better and at that point you will eat into audio book sales which does make money for the author and the people who produce them. so if you allow text to speech be the norm and have no royalties associated with it then you take all that extra revenue and flush it down the toilet because you just set the precedent to give those jobs to a computer program.
As far as Kindle, I think it is a useless piece of tech that will end up in a land fill for our kids to deal with one day. It’s an unnecessary invention.
I think epaper is useful, but not in this application and probably not for the general public.
So all those who have reading difficulties (due to problems of sight or understanding of written word) should just go without?
Personally, I’d love to have a Kindle or other e-book reader as, due to a problem with my left eye, although I can read a screen fine, even with glasses I struggle to read from a written page without getting a monstrous headache or falling asleep. Surely it would be better for the industry if people, like me, could purchase books in a format that benefits them most (in the case of the Kindle I could choose to read the book off the screen myself or let the text to speech read it when I’m struggling to do it myself), rather than to force people to wait until an audiobook recording of the book is available?
John: I agree with your conclusion, but I think you should be more careful with your language. You said “It doesn’t infringe on audiobook sales” and this isn’t quite accurate. Copyright infringement has nothing to do with impacting sales. If something is copied illegally, it infringes regardless of whether it actually prevented a sale.
Being accurate with the lingo is important because otherwise a lot of these concepts get confused.
As a separate point, I do take issue with your conceited statement that essentially says “if you don’t have insurance and website services, you’re not a published author.” I know plenty of authors, published and not, who haven’t necessarily scored big with their books like you did with “Black Hats: Misfits, Criminals, and Scammers in the Internet Age.” That doesn’t mean they’re not authors.
I knew that would wind someone up. Note what I said – you don’t need Authors Guild to give you a leg up if you’re an author. If you’re published these days – and given the economic situation, I agree that this is not always the case – you either have a day job or you’re Stephen King. There is a no middle ground.
I used the term “published authors” very precisely because the Authors Guild uses it very precisely. There is a way to go about being an author that allows you to make a little money as well and it’s a hard road that requires education, networking, and hard work.
I think a discussion of “published” authors is best performed offline. Feel free to drop me a line or AIM me with your thoughts. All my contact info is on bigwidelogic.com.
P.S. Brad, you need to think about this a little bit more. Your assumption that people would stop writing books if the publishers were removed from the food chain is wrong. Removing the entities that control what gets published is good for everyone except the entity being removed and crappy authors that get published anyway because of an arrangement with a publisher.
In the end, whether it’s fair or not, anyone in the business of physically distributing information is going to be affected. The newspaper industry is a good example because they’re further along the same road. Those that are unwilling to adopt a more relevant (read: value-adding) business model will be pulverized by the market.
No, I understand that there will still be authors, but this could very well change everything in terms of licencing of content from authors which could change the relationship between authors, publishers, studios, ect.
I am not saying that it will 100% but I think the guild has the right to debate this considering what has happened to the rest of the entertainment industry.
Also, I don’t see the future being us reading novels off of a tablet. To be honest, that’s the last thing I want. I (and I bet most of the people here) spend 8-10 hours a day on a computer. The last thing I want to do when I get home is look at another computer screen for hours on end. Our eyes need a rest sometimes you know.
Our eyes do need a rest sometime. You’re absolutely right. Which is why text-to-speech can be so helpful!
Glad you’ve seen the light, Brad :-)
lol. that was good.
The author is being paid a royalty on the book. One copy is being sold, one royalty is being paid. How the user then chooses to enjoy it is irrelevant.
The issue for music and television and even audiobooks is entirely different. There the files can be copied and shared or distributed over a network to thousands
This particular fight is a tempest in a tea cup. There is no threat to anybody, except perhaps in a wild and distant future audiobooks may lose a share – guess what, that is what a free economy is about.
Hey Brad, Shut the hell up!
you are not mclovin my comments or what?
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poo. sorry.
I left the book I was reading on the subway yesterday by mistake. Roy Blount Jr. would probably have me and the person that picked it up arrested for copyright violations…
Has anyone noticed that the book the “robot” is holding is upside down!
Maybe a kindle could address that !
Every penny the Author’s Guild spends on this ridiculous legal cause is money that could be used to push the technology forward, make it known to everyone, simple to use, and get more cash to the authors. Sad.
I just read the article that Mr. Blount Jr. cranked out for the NYT. I hope that he reads TechCrunch.
Audio rights pertains to distribution of an author’s work, in the form of audio. Distribution can be by CD, tape, digital audio file, stream, or broadcast etc.
These at the Author’s Guild see a potential loss of revenue, because some people, who might have bought both a paper book and an audio book in the past, may now just buy an e-book and both read and listen to it via text-to-speech (TTS). While this may be true, that loss of revenue does not justify invoking the audio rights argument. The fact is that only one form of the book is being distributed, and that’s via text in the e-book. That the purchaser chooses to process the text via Kindle is the customer’s business. This logic applies to all text that we have to on our computers and devices. I can use TTS to speak any text I have rightful access to. I can also feed the text into a braille display, project it on my wall, and print it out and make a piñata.
On the other hand, if the customer were to record the audio output of the Kindle, or record their own reading of a book, and then distribute such audio work to others, that would certainly infringe on the rights of the copyright owner, especially if distributed commercially.
But this is not what the Author’s Guild is arguing. Sometimes technology makes the information we purchase more useful. This is one of those cases. The Authors Guild needs to use common sense and realize that they cannot invoke copyright law in this situation. Text-to-speech is not “copying”.
They should also realize that groundbreaking devices like the Kindle will probably drive sales in the long run, and it’s precisely because of these benefits of digital technology.
I don’t think the Kindle 2’s text-to-speech feature is a threat to audiobooks because of the trouble that goes into it. With new toys and gadgets, people are looking for simplicity and features that cater to laziness. Often, a product comes with other features that require a little more work – such as the text-to-speech feature with Kindle 2. These features often fall by the wayside as people judge that the necessary work isn’t justified by the result. I don’t think there’s any threat here.
Look for publishers to start pushing a EULA on e-books banning reading outload by any person or device.
Infingement. That’s what Blount called Amazon’s text-to-speech feature.
did no one get that reference?