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Even if 2 becomes true, it still doesn't justify his argument that the Kindle is treated differently than a laptop, desktop, etc... I also don't think that voice synthesis will be anywhere near a competition for a human voice when reading a book at any time in the near or even distant future. In the past 20 years voice synthesis has gone from sounding like a robot to sounding a little less like a robot. There is a difference between what AT&T is doing in trying to develop a human sounding voice when the inputs and responses surround a very limited set of parameters and a voice reading text that could be as varied as science fiction to children's books. The nuances required for human reading, including analyzing the context to deliver a line with sarcasm or humor simply aren't within the realm of technology being developed.
I have listened to a portion of a book on the Kindle2 using text to speech and I could never stand to listen to an entire book. That being said, I could imagine someone reading a book that they didn't want to put down, and going on a short trip somewhere and setting the Kindle to read it to them while driving until they got to their destination and could start reading again. That person is never going to go out and buy the audio book to fill in that gap because every time they start reading they would have to find where the audio left off and vice versa. They would just put the book down and pick it back up when the destination is reached (or just read while driving, which I have seen before).
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