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As an attorney I think I have a particular sensitivity to the doublespeak put forth by Aiken because I have done it for my own clients on many occasions. It is the situation where you have to put together an argument on an indefensible position without it appearing ludicrous at first blush. I think his problem is that all of his argument presupposes that the author has the right to limit what Amazon does with the book as it relates to a text to speech function. It is this fundamental flaw that means that regardless of how good text to speech it doesn't justify the position that it isn't permitted.
The biggest problem is that for a non-original derivative work to be considered copyrightable it must create a non-transitory copy of a work. What the Kindle and a computers text-to-speech program does is create a transitory copy at best. I would argue that it doesn't even create a copy, it simply applies its algorithmic functions to each individual written word and recreates them individually into spoken word. If it were to take the entire book, and create a separate mp3 file (which is what some programs actually offer) you might have an argument that you have created a non-transitory derivative work that is subject to copyright, but absent that I think the entire argument fails.
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