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Old 02-27-2009, 05:09 PM   #12
starrigger
Jeffrey A. Carver
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rhadin View Post
That is not what he is saying. There is a difference. The difference is as simple as this: Most ebooks cannot be read by your PC using text-to-speech because the DRM (or something else) TURNS OFF that capability. You have to purchase a specific product with audio rights.

In contrast, he says, Amazon TURNS ON the audio capability in every ebook it sells for the Kindle, but Amazon has not paid for or negotiated the right to do so. It simply has done so as part of its converting ebooks for the Kindle.
I don't think he said it as clearly in that interview, but I had a long phone conversation with him the other day, and that is indeed one of the concerns he communicated to me.

Here is one of the key points in the interview, in terms of what he told me in our conversation:

Quote:
So you're saying that the difference is not actually the device, it's the size of the market?

The difference is the channel. For example, many publishers do not have the audio rights or the multimedia rights when they sell electronic books. If they sell files that go into a Kindle and they know its going to use a audio capability that is exclusively licensed to somewhere else, the publisher has a problem, because the author has licensed it somewhere else.
And that, I think, is a legitimate point. There are thousands of contracts that spell out in legal terms what constitutes audio rights. It might not be what you or I would call "audio books." Amazon may not have the right to ignore those existing contracts. The Guild wants the Kindle books to have a software switch to enable the read-aloud if those rights are granted as part of the ebook rights, or disable it if not.

I blogged on my talk with Aiken, which you can read here.

He didn't entirely convince me of the Guild's position, but he brought me a lot closer. Right now, I'm interested in seeing how this plays out.
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