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Originally Posted by jackastor
Lol Now that sounds like fun. How about have it read out loud to us. Actually reading out loud would be a decent thing, it would bring ereading to the blind, and expose more books that way.
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The text to speech capability was a big reason why one acquaintance purchased a Kindle Touch. She then found that very few book publishers allowed you to use the read out look functionality. I get a vision of corporate lawyers sitting in a circle muttering about violating copyright -- after all, two people might listen to the book at the same time. The literal quote from the Author's Guild spokes-slug was “They don't have the right to read a book out loud. That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”
For the few ebooks she found that allowed text to speech, the quality of the speech was quite poor compared to a human read audiobook.
If I am reading the license properly for one of the few audiobooks I own, the only time I can listen to it in my car is if I am alone in the car. Otherwise, I need a public performance license.
There are times when I think Shakespeare had it right:
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." 2 Henry VI, 4.2.59
Regards,
David