New Kindle Audio Feature Causes a Stir

[bwaldron]

Originally Posted by starrigger

No, that's fictionwise, and they do not require DRM. Ereads prefers DRM-free books, and it's only where required that they add the DRM. Such as for Mobipocket (the service, not the format) and Sony.

Sorry, I may have been unclear. I meant mobipocket.com when I said mobipocket earlier.

Gotcha. So indeed Amazon/Mobipocket is mandating DRM even when the publisher doesn't desire it.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

So according to Cory Doctorow, it is Amazon that insists that eBooks and audio books be laden with DRM even if the publishers do not want such.
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Well, Jeff Bezos was quoted in an interview saying that Amazon is DRM agnostic and that they left that up to the publishers. If quoted accurately, I think he was being disingenuous, because clearly Amazon requires DRM for most of the books, even if it's indirectly through mobipocket.com.

Even though Amazon makes a big sales point of their mp3 downloads being DRM-free.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by bwaldron

Gotcha. So indeed Amazon/Mobipocket is mandating DRM even when the publisher doesn't desire it.

Correct.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Well, Jeff Bezos was quoted in an interview saying that Amazon is DRM agnostic and that they left that up to the publishers. If quoted accurately, I think he was being disingenuous, because clearly Amazon requires DRM for most of the books, even if it's indirectly through mobipocket.com.

Even though Amazon makes a big sales point of their mp3 downloads being DRM-free.

I have to admit I'd just assumed their music stance applied to ebooks and they'd eliminate DRM if they could. I wonder if Mobipocket gets any royalty off of the encryption for Amazon ebooks.

[bwaldron]

Originally Posted by Alisa

I have to admit I'd just assumed their music stance applied to ebooks and they'd eliminate DRM if they could.

Differences being that they entered the MP3 world in a much more mature state, against a leading competitor that was using DRM and selling their own hardware. In ebooks, Amazon is the ones selling the hardware and hoping to gain/maintain the leading position in a less mature market.

I'd like to believe Bezos, but actions haven't matched his words, at least to this point. We shall see...

[anne fleming]

What's interesting to me, is this kind of tech was originally developed for the blind - to give disabled people access to written material. Clearly, this isn't the way Amazon is marketing the tool, but I think they could make an argument that their tech is much closer to a translation for the sight-impaired, than it is a dramatization like that intended in an audiobook format. Amazon might argue that using DRM to block this kind of tech might imperil access to the disabled accross all kinds of written reasources.

[HarryT]

Do blind people have a "right" to use written material? Obviously it's nice if they can do, but it's not a "right", is it?

[SpiderMatt]

Another example of why copyright is a poor idea and how people try to use it by going to dictatorial lengths to control content.

[SpiderMatt]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Do blind people have a "right" to use written material? Obviously it's nice if they can do, but it's not a "right", is it?

It's not about user rights. It's about Amazon's right to make a device with a feature that might actually increase demand among consumers.

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Do blind people have a "right" to use written material? Obviously it's nice if they can do, but it's not a "right", is it?

Actually here in the US there is a law called American with Disabilities Act which gives quite a few rights to blind people among others, and while its precise legal reach is unclear, it is the basis of the one DMCA exception related to Text to Speech and shifting drm format

But the general issue is that if publishers and the author's guild have to go to technicalities - and it's unclear to me if they even have a case since as various people pointed out, having TTS is not essentially different from reading a book aloud - puts them on a very dangerous path when they like the music industry depend essentially on people's goodwill.

I do not care that much about music in general, so the fact that the big records have been behaving so badly is for me "another bunch of stupid, dumb, evil ***, let them get what they have coming", but I will be saddened if I see the publishers following them in "dumb, stupid, evil **" territory

[Phogg]

Regarding all the text to speech considerations.

I am pretty sure that (at least within the US courts) recent decisions favoring the rights of the handicapped will continue to trump copyright concerns where there is a conflict.

Publishers and others will be able to oppose text to speech only until the first time it goes to court with someone who is mostly blind or badly dyslexic - and then this contention will be squashed.

This has been the trend for the last fifteen years or so and I see it as pretty much a done deal. I would imagine Amazon's legal team saw it the same way.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by Madam Broshkina

I wonder if Amazon has negotiated seperate rights for this feature. If not Mr. Aiken may have a point.

Mr. Aiken has a very valid point. In many cases, even the publisher does not have the subsidiary rights to release audio versions.

As for the question about how stupid can publishers and authors be regarding this, the real question is how arrogant can Amazon be? Authors and publishers negotiate specific rights -- be they electronic, print, audio, geographical, whatever. The author owns the rights to all forms of his/her work until the author gives some of them up as a result of contract. Absent specific contractual rights, Amazon is not entitled to distribute audio versions of content created by someone else.

I've never understood why some people think they have an absolute right to whatever they want whenever they want it and however they want it.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

So according to Cory Doctorow, it is Amazon that insists that eBooks and audio books be laden with DRM even if the publishers do not want such.

And the Amazon contract I am familiar with supports Cory Doctorow.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by anne fleming

What's interesting to me, is this kind of tech was originally developed for the blind - to give disabled people access to written material. Clearly, this isn't the way Amazon is marketing the tool, but I think they could make an argument that their tech is much closer to a translation for the sight-impaired, than it is a dramatization like that intended in an audiobook format. Amazon might argue that using DRM to block this kind of tech might imperil access to the disabled accross all kinds of written reasources.

There is a specific exemption for disabled access, an exemption no publisher or author I know of disputes or questions. The difference is Amazon's touting this as a feature of the Kindle for nondisabled users and that the Kindle is not a device specifically for the disabled market. All I can say is that if I were still practicing law, I'd love to represent the Author's Guild on this one.

[Jellby]

I find it absurd, plain nonsense, to try limit the right or the cability to read aloud a text legally acquired, as long as we are talking about personal use. It's like saying you cannot use a magnifying glass to read a book or view an art print, it's like forbidding the use of a dictionary to look up difficult or foreign words, it's like disabling the "pause" button in a video or the volume in a music recording.