

The Kindle Swindle? - edgefield
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/opinion/25blount.html?_r=1

======
witten
I'm sympathetic to the plight of the starving (or even well-fed) writer
wanting to get paid for their work. But the opinion espoused in this piece is
the classic argument that just because an industry has grown accustomed to a
particular revenue stream or business model, they should therefore always and
forever have the privilege of keeping it. And anyone who introduces products
or technology to prevent that or cut into their revenue is not playing fair,
morally questionable, and/or should have to compensate them for lost revenue.

It's a ridiculous argument.

~~~
sethg
This is not his argument.

Separate revenue streams for audio books is not just a quaint custom in the
publishing world, but a consequence of copyright law, which treats text and
audio rights as properties that may be licensed separately. He's arguing that
his constituents' property is being taken from them without their consent. I
think his case is weak, but it's not dumb.

~~~
jpd
But Amazon is neither selling nor giving away audio books. They are giving
away a general text-to-speech solution which may conveniently be used on a
book. Arguing that this is violating copyrights is the same thing as saying
that text-to-speech is inherently illegal.

~~~
andreyf
I wonder how things would change if the text-to-speech were done server-side?
I'd imagine one can get significantly better quality if you're not doing text-
to-speech on the 400Mhz processor on the Kindle 2.

~~~
blinks
The issue there is the bandwidth required for streaming audio. This is a
device set up for batch downloads and not much else -- when you add time-
sensitive network requirements like this, you make customers unhappy.

Also, what if you're using it as a "book on tape" in the car, on a road trip
through the middle of nowhere? You lose network connection, you lose your book
on tape.

tldr: I think it would be better quality, when you could get it, but at some
level reliability is more important for this application.

------
ajb
You work for six months or a year building up your product, for no pay. A
startup founder - or an unpublished author.

What most tech types don't realize is how much risk there is already in the
writers profession. These are not fat-cat music executives. They don't have
anything like as much chance of becoming rich as a founder of a startup. Heck,
most don't even make a living, and have to keep the day job; even once they
get published and get advances on later books. And if one book tanks, they're
back to square one.

That's why they don't like change. They are already drowning in risk, and
people are saying they should take on some more?

I don't buy the idea that text-to-speech is infringement, personally. But it's
too easy to say that authors should just 'change their business model'. How?

~~~
jbrun
"They don't have anything like as much chance of becoming rich as a founder of
a startup."

Have you ever looked at the revenues for a best selling author? They very much
a have a small chance of hitting it big. They should change their business
model by offering interesting things like McSweeney's which uses both online
and offline products to attract an audience.

~~~
unalone
McSweeney's is an icky model. They work online, but they're very closed-door,
they appreciate only a very specific manner of writing, and they don't tell
writers what it is they're doing wrong when they are, in fact, doing something
wrong.

------
RK
_For the record: no, the Authors Guild does not expect royalties from anybody
doing non-commercial performances of "Goodnight Moon." If parents want to send
their children off to bed with the voice of Kindle 2, however, it’s another
matter._

I really don't follow his logic here. I think the fundamental question is
"what is a performance?". I just find it hard to see that kindle reading =
voice actor reading. Why go to the concert, when you've got a player piano? Is
that really a threat?

~~~
rationalbeaver
It seems that Amazon would agree with that assessment, since they own
Audible.com, the web's biggest audio book seller. One would imagine that if
they thought the kindle's reading feature would infringe upon/destroy the
audio book business, they wouldn't have given it the green light.

~~~
sethbc
Agreed. In fact, Amazon engineered the Kindle to play Audible books as well.
And they didn't eliminate this functionality when they added the ability to
'read' the books aloud.

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mrkurt
There's a big disconnect here. Copyright controls _distribution_ , not use.
Amazon is distributing ebooks, the exact same ebooks as they were distributing
3 months ago. The only difference is, they now have a tool that consumes the
book differently.

It's the equivalent of music visualization tools. When I play a CD in my Xbox
and it shows me pretty lights, no one considers that copyright infringement.
It's the exact same functionality as text-to-speech, but in reverse.

------
jhickner
If I buy a book, I can freely record myself reading it. I then have an audio
book. I _own_ the book I bought, so recording myself (or anyone else) reading
it is completely within my rights.

If I suddenly don't need to record myself, because technology reaches a point
where a piece of software can read _my book_ just as well as I can, then
that's just the way it is.

If a temporary inconvenience creates a business opportunity for you, great.
But you can't expect to hold onto that business once the inconvenience is
gone.

The content industries need to understand that they can sell "a book" or "a
movie", or "a song", but they can't sell music that only plays on certain
devices, or DVDs that only play in certain continents, or books that you can
read silently but not out loud. It's nonsense.

~~~
tptacek
You cannot redistribute the audio recording you created of yourself reading
the book.

~~~
inklesspen
And you cannot redistribute the audio recording the Kindle makes on the fly.

No audio book is being distributed by Amazon. An ebook is being distributed by
Amazon.

------
barrkel
Text to speech is at best a 10% solution for the blind and those with impaired
sight. The robotic voice that comes out of synthesizers is such a long way
short of human cadence and intonation that the argument that the two compete
is all but ludicrous for those in the know - i.e. those who have experience of
both.

I can't take this guy seriously.

~~~
Harkins
They're getting much better, check out
<http://www.ivona.com/online/editor.php?set_lang=en>

I can tell it's generated, but there are bits here and there that sound like a
normal speaking voice. This is like CGI in the 90s, where everyone was talking
about how it was wooden and clunky and awful but the proponents just kept
building better tools and now teenagers can make lightsaber duels with their
laptops.

------
jaspertheghost
Old guard always wants to protect a dying business because the people in
charge have to wipe out their existing knowledge and experience of their
business to go into a new business. When he/she goes into the new business,
he/she would have no advantages vs a competitor that already exists in the
field (i.e. a print executive going into tech). Most companies (due to the
promotion structure) cannot make this jump some can (Intel).

I think e-books give the best chance for print to survive as a medium (in
e-ink form, not in paper form). But as always, the captain of the ship fades
away, not unlike a frog being slowly boiled to death because the temperature
is slowly increasing.

~~~
unalone
Why not in paper form?

There's something lost from paper to e-ink, and everybody who uses a Kindle
will realize that. If e-books become big and cheap, that means book sales are
going to benefit, to some degree.

~~~
jaspertheghost
I personally read a lot and I think the electronic medium will add an
additional layer of value: annotation, collaboration, access to a large amount
of knowledge without having to lug around paper. Print's slowly dying because
it's not linked to rest of the content in the world.

I don't think content creators are dead by any means, but I do think there
have to be devices and mediums that enable more than the create and publish
model.

When Amazon designed Kindle, they tried to make sure the user experience was
as close to a book as possible. When I go on a plane, I would prefer not
lugging around 4 books in my suitcase vs just using a Kindle. There is
something about the print medium that's very pleasing, but I think e-ink and
e-books will co-exist like theater and t.v. Although many can say that the
T.V. will cannabilze all theater going activity, there is something unique
about the experience that the solo activity cannot capture.

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sethg
I think Blount is overestimating the capacities of text-to-speech technology.
Sure, there may be speech synthesizers that can cough and say "umm" and do
other human-cadence-like things, but I suspect that _inferring all those
details of intonation from the normal punctuated text of a novel_ is beyond
the capacity of present technology, and may even be AI-complete.

If the digital files on the Kindle contained lots of metadata, added by a
human editor, to assist the text-to-speech system, then Blount would have more
of a case.

------
gojomo
To the minimal extent auto-reading of ebooks competes with audiobooks, it also
increases the value of those ebooks. The answer for Blount and the Author's
Guild is to price the ebook reproduction rights properly -- not legally impair
what ebook owners can do with their own books, on their own devices.

------
ynniv
When this came up at the Kindle 2 release, I had hoped that the Author's Guild
would listen to people's reactions as an indicator of things to come. Instead,
they shout their argument twice as loud and in a more public place. Roy Blount
has a choice, but he needs to make it soon.

The smart thing to do is restructure his industry following Apple's iTunes
model, reducing the power of publishers and negotiating more favorable
agreements between authors and ebook distributers.

The stupid thing is to become the next Lars Ulrich, telling people that
they're pirates and technology is bad. He has a convenient corporate entity to
attack, which is much easier than poor college kids, but he is fighting a
futile battle against the tide.

Audio rights are an absurd right to begin with, existing because we drive
around so much that some people are willing to splurge on this luxurious
derivative. Technology naturally makes things less expensive, and if it isn't
the Kindle, it will be another reader, or a reader add-on, that will provide
the same functionality.

Do the right thing, Roy, and spend your time optimizing the efficiency of the
market for authors.

------
Tichy
So what do they want, should ebooks cost twice the price of normal books
because they are both text and audiobooks now? I am sure doubling the price
would increase the sales enormously, much to the pleasure of the authors.

Or maybe the system of having separate rights for all sorts of uses was
crooked from the beginning.

------
barbie17
They should be grateful that the Amazon Kindle, a complement good to ebooks is
so popular. How many books were purchased because of the Amazon Kindle? How
many books will be bought because of the extra usefulness of the audio
feature? Instead, they are biting the hand that feeds them. Not only that, but
they are also obstructing the advancement of technology and innovation by
reducing their usefulness. First Google Books and now this. What a bunch of
ungrateful bastards - hardly better than the RIAA.

~~~
unalone
Perhaps I'm biased because I'm a writer myself, but I think they're a little
bit more excusable than the RIAA. Writers have an ancient history: as a group
they are further behind the times than any other, and their world is extremely
closed-door and high-barrier. Because of that, their love and joy has
dwindled, decade by decade, and they haven't noticed that the people who are
making their craft more loved are the people who are embracing the future
(Billy Collins, former poet laureate, for instance).

The effect is that you have something akin to a group of old, uninformed,
frightened people, who are all very bright but very ignorant regarding some
things, and some of those people think technology means books have to die, and
if that _was_ the case then they'd be right in that something powerful and
valuable was being lost. So I understand why they're so fearful, even if I
wish they could comprehend how things have been moving forward.

~~~
wmeredith
Since when is ignorance an excuse to inflict harm?

The established players seek to maintain the status quo in which they exist as
"established." This leads them to fight change. I for one, hope they lose that
fight, but it's only because I'm not one of those established in this fight,
so I will benefit from progressive methods to access media.

It's also worth mentioning that you'll find _very_ few
undiscovered/unpublished writers that would have a problem with someone buying
their book and listening to it on a Kindle.

~~~
unalone
_Since when is ignorance an excuse to inflict harm?_

They see it as protecting themselves. They inflict harm in the process, but
they don't see it as that, and that's why I feel sympathy for them: they don't
entirely understand what's going on.

 _The established players seek to maintain the status quo in which they exist
as "established." This leads them to fight change._

They think that the physical form of the book is an important part of
literature. I agree with them, but unlike them I think the book is stronger
and more lasting than they think. If the book _was_ in danger, then I don't
care what solution was being proposed, I would fight to keep the novel afloat
for as long as possible. It's too valuable to risk losing.

 _It's also worth mentioning that you'll find very few
undiscovered/unpublished writers that would have a problem with someone buying
their book and listening to it on a Kindle._

Most of those writers aren't as dedicated as the published one. A few are, and
they're the people who are worth reaching out to, but writing takes an
incredible amount of dedication. It attracts an odd bunch of people.

------
jeffesp
I think the interesting bit here is whether the technology in the Kindle is
actually infringing on the audio rights. It is a legal question that is going
to need to define if the software generated voice is the same thing as an
audio recording and therefore requires the same rights to distribute. I would
think not as an audio recording exists when outside of software, and I assume
the Kindle does this on the fly. But I am not a lawyer and all that, so who
knows how this will play out.

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helium
I would still rather pay for an audiobook read by a person if I really wanted
it. A human voice can still convey a lot more emotion than any current
technology.

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iuguy
Am I right in thinking that there's a potential opportunity for Amazon here?
If they provide audio playback support for the Kindle they could sell combined
Audio/eBooks that maybe even highlight the spoken text and turn in time to the
audio?

I think this could be good for both audio books and ebooks as well as when
considering the implications for educational books (such as language books or
religious study materials).

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ajaypopat
If you want to see what the Kindle 2 text-to-speech sounds like, you can
checkout this video <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9UtONUBV0s> (at the 4:05
mark)

The unboxing video is really annoying but I was pleasantly surprised with the
quality of the text-to-speech. The voice even has intonation which I've never
heard in automated speech before.

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far33d
For a text-to-speech system to be as good as the standard audiobook, it would
require the software actually understand the material and give each line the
correct emotion and cadence it deserves. I find that words spoken at monotone
or at a pace inappropriate to the content go right through me.

The audiobook is a performance and as a performance, deserves additional
rights and royalties.

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subhash
It seems funny to me that he chose to discuss the technology behind the voice
synthesis as that seems to weaken his argument. It is clear that the audio
experience (the effects to make it sound like a human voice) is largely a
result of the technology and the copyrighted material is still being used only
in text form

------
greyman
He is ridiculous. I can do anything legal with the purchased file, that's my
basic right as a customer.

~~~
eli
No you can't. Maybe that's the way it _should be_ , but you certainly can't
read that book to an audience or crack the DRM and print out copies for your
friends.

~~~
greyman
I know, but I wrote "anything legal". Reading the book to an audience might
not be legal, but running it through the reading software at my home certainly
is not illegal.

~~~
jerf
I don't disagree with you, but that's still begging the question.

~~~
Nwallins
_that's still begging the question._

What is? This is the salient point:

 _running it through the reading software at my home certainly is not
illegal._

~~~
jerf
You beg the question of whether it's legal or not. You claim it's legal
because it's legal.

I totally agree that it should be, but I disagree that this has been
_established_ in any legal sense. Personally I think the evidence points in
the direction of "it has never been considered legally".

------
uzimonkey
By this logic, I have to pay royalties if I hire someone to read a book out
loud to me.

