Yesterday one of our members
reported that Amazon has began to disable the text-to-speech (TTS) feature of the Kindle on a book-by-book basis. Today I read in the news that apparently Amazon can go even so far as to
remotely disable the TTS function of these books already stored on your personal device.
Meredith Filak
writes on her blog:
Quote:
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Update, 13 May: Beginning yesterday, Random House Publishers began to disable text-to-speech remotely. The TTS function has apparently been remotely disabled in over 40 works so far. Affected titles include works by Toni Morrison, Stephen King, and others. Other notable titles include Andrew Meachem's American Lion, and five of the top ten Random House best-sellers in the Kindle store. As a former English major, a teacher, and a lover of books, I can't see how anyone can justify eroding access to popular and classic literature.]
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Beside the fact that it's probably
not very difficult to enable TTS again (not with Amazon's or the publisher's blessing of course), the question needs to be asked if Amazon has the legal right to remotely change files on your Kindle device aimed at decreasing its functionality.
Can anyone confirm that there is indeed a remote switch?
[via
/.]