You’d think that organizations would learn their lesson when something they propose gets a proverbial kicking around the Internet, with almost no one agreeing with them. Not so, particularity if the organization in question happens to be the Authors Guild.

Amazon recently unveiled its new Kindle 2, which as the name suggests is the second iteration of its massively popular e-book reader. The new version of the Kindle is a big improvement on the original, and comes with a host of new features, some of which have proved to be rather controversial.

The Amazon Kindle 2, which is now available for $359, includes a new ‘Read-to-me’ function which is basically a text-to-speech converter. This kind of technology isn’t new, and plenty of software already exists that can make your computer read aloud to you.

But despite this, on the day the Kindle 2 was announced, Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild stated, ““They don’t have the right to read a book out loud. That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”

This ludicrous pronouncement prompted much derision around the Web, with myself arguing that if the Authors Guild’s argument was taken to its logical conclusion, every mother who read a bedtime story to her child would be a criminal.

Now, to coincide with the actual physical release of the Kindle 2, the Authors Guild has reiterated its claim, with the president of the organization, Roy Blount Jr. writing an op-ed in The New York Times. In it, he answers some of the arguments against what his executive director said two weeks ago, and then makes it clear that he agrees with the sentiment.

Blount Jr. argues that the automated voices are “quite listenable” even though everyone who has actually used a Kindle 2 (I doubt whether Roy has) states that while the technology is indeed state of the art, they wouldn’t want to listen to the computerized voices for long stretches at a time. They certainly can’t be compared favorably to the actors hired to read novels out loud for audio books.

The point Blount Jr. seems to be missing is that every e-book released on to the Kindle 2 has already been paid for. The author has had his cut, and so has the publisher. Unless the Authors Guild expects readers to pay twice for a feature they may not even use, then his argument falls at the first hurdle.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 at 9:52 pm under Legal, Opinion, Technology.

Read more entries by Dave Parrack.
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