And so it begins: Random House has switched off Kindle Text-to-speech by default, angering educators and advocates for the blind in the process. Forty titles have been shut down including books by Stephen King and Toni Morrison.
Interestingly, Random House can start this process even after you’ve purchased the book on the Kindle, essentially shutting off functionality on products you already “own.” As we’ve said before: text-to-speech is not an audiobook, the Authors Guild is wrong, and even Wil Wheaton thinks this whole thing is dumb.
Once Wesley Crusher is against you, you need to rethink your priorities.
The Kindle 2’s text-to-speech system uses a synthesized voice to read books over the audio jack. The quality is average at best and could not be compared to a professional recorded audiobook, the product the Authors Guild and Random House are trying to protect.
yeah — hello, it’s called DRM which stands for “Darn your Receipt it’s our Media”.
This is a predictable knee jerk reaction, but I seriously hope they reconsider it. I mean, c’mon…if I read to somebody from my Kindle, am I endangering Audio Books?
I’d say the difference is between reading the NYTimes through the Kindle browser, or paying for the nicely formatted one. I can “get by” with the browser one, but on Sundays and such, I buy the issue.
Actually its illegal to read books outloud to other people… its like buying a dvd and playing it at a church or in a group of people.
If that’s the case then they need to just go after schools all there money problems are solved
Mike,
You don’t know what you’re talking about. There is nothing illegal about reading a book aloud to others and it’s not illegal to play recorded music at church or too friends. If a commercial venue – i.e. nightclub – plays someones recording there are probably royalty fees due the songwriter, but there is nothing illegal about playing the song.
As for why Random House has taken this action, it is probably because they realize that a percentage of the population will run a wire from the headphones section of the Kindle to the microphone section of a pc and a sound recorder on a PC or MAC and then distribute the whole book for free and then doing to publishings business what file sharing has done to the music business’s bottom line.
Mark Markarian
Pleasantville, NY
Hmmm… I smell an ADA lawsuit on the horizon…
Obviously more digital copyright nonsense.
So clear that this is an infringement on our basic rights.
Who is ever going to acknowledge somebody else’s right to prevent me from having text read to me by software?
Not me.
“Once Wesley Crusher is against you, you need to rethink your priorities.”
Wil is more of an ubergeek now than “the guy who played Wesley Crusher.” His opinion stands on its own without having to invoke that old role.
Boycott random house! they have no compassion for people with disabilities that rely upon speech to text.
funny you mention Stephen King in the article who is basically blind himself.
Next to be banned/blocked: Reading aloud to your children at night.
Whys not just charge an extra fee (per title) to toggle the speech feature on?
Could the text-to-speech function be used in reverse to create non-DRM book copies to a PC/Mac using Dragon’s speech-to-text, for example?
Yep they are idiots. They will end up like the music industry, hated by all. They are missing a HUGE business opportunity.
So lame. I understand Amazon needs the books to sell, but I they need to push back on the publishers more often on stupid stuff like this.
And this kind of nonsense is why I will never, ever spend a dime on a DRM-infested device/system like a Kindle.
The problem is that the book publishers are even further behind the ‘digital revolution’ than the music and film companies.
You can therefore expect the following:
. Refusal to accept the indesputable facts as they exist.
. Breathtaking arrogance.
. Lobbying government and proposing hard time for reading aloud.
. Lawsuits against single mothers in poverty.
. Quietly purchasing popular sites and making them unpopular.
. Acceptance of the inevitable, but less-than-ideal solutions that still generate revenue.
We are perhaps 3 years from the last stage, so delay buying until then. Personally, I will never own a DRM-based product until my business depends on it, and i’d even rather buy my books from the seconds shop and recycle them back once read.
I don’t see why the authors/publishers cannot impose whatever restrictions they want on their content. As consumers, you all have the opportunity to disagree with your wallet…
And we will disagree with our wallets. I stopped buying music several years ago as the music labels started their war on the general public. I no longer buy movies or go to the cinema for similar reasons. Now I will stop buying books. Our library is 4 minutes walk away…
There might be an economic situation on at the moment, but you’re taking “cheapskate” to a whole new [low] level. It could be funny if it wasn’t so sad and pathetic.
Protesting about the costs is one thing but ultimately you affect all of us with an attitude like that.
Not only the wallet, after all it is Amazon.com we are talking about here. We all have the opportunity to disagree with our ratings as well!
Let the 1-star flood for text-to-speech disabled e-books begin! :)
Anyone have a links list of the Random House titles that got TTS disabled?
Ok, here is a partial list: http://moourl.com/kindle_shame
Contributions are welcome :)
That’s absurd. There’s a major difference between a synthesized text reader and a human voice. Are we now implying that people who can’t see have fewer rights than people who do?
Boycott Random House until they change this discriminatory policy!