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Originally Posted by Liviu_5
Very informative post in the blog, though the one thing that I would take exception with is about audio being currently turned/on and off in ebooks.
That would be true if the books were in one (non-converted) drm'ed format, but otherwise it's just not true since you can extract the book to a text file and use a TTS engine - for example it is immaterial that a pdf has audio turned off since you can always extract the text if it's not drm'ed and these days pdf drm is smoke, the way lit or prc have been for a while.
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Smoke to the sophisticated user. Not to the average user, who would have no clue how to remove drm. And would never think of extracting a book to a text file just to plug it into TTS software.
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Since my contention is that most e-books people have are not drm'ed (however they were obtained in first place)
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Why do you contend that? Leaving aside the public domain books, I mean. I'd guess most
are drm'd--though that's only a guess.
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The more cogent argument is the "convenience" one, the "channel" if you want, but considering that Audible is part of Amazon, why not think of the Kindle 2 TTS as free advertising for "real" audiobooks...
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Well, that's the legal stuff, isn't it? What if I've licensed audio rights to a different company? I might even, as the author,
want to treat the TTS exactly as you suggest. But if I've granted exclusive rights to sound reproduction to someone else...
Mind you, I don't know. I'm saying the answer isn't clear to me.
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Regarding contracts and other legal stuff, it's an interesting issue but until it goes to court and precedent decisions are issued, I think that nobody truly knows if TTS is encompassed by audio-rights. There is a piece in Ars Technica discussing that and automatic translations here:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...-copyright.ars
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Thanks for the link. That looks very interesting, and I'll have to read it carefully when I have more time.
Speaking of which, I have
got to stop posting these things and get some other work done!
