Will The Authors Guild Freak Out About Text To Speech On The iPad?

from the yakety-yak dept

Fri, Mar 26th 2010 6:08am — Mike Masnick

When the second generation Kindle ebook reader launched with a text-to-speech functionality, the Authors Guild freaked out, claiming that this violated a totally made up on the spot aspect of copyright law. Plenty of copyright lawyers dissected this claim in great detail and concluded that the Authors Guild was making up stories about how they wanted copyright law to act, rather than paying attention to what copyright law actually said. There simply is no copyright violation in having a computer read a book aloud to you. However, after the Authors Guild ratcheted up the threats, Amazon finally caved and let authors choose to block the text-to-speech functionality.

Now, with the iPad coming out, some are noticing that it, too, contains such text-to-speech capabilities, and yet oddly, we haven't heard complaints from the Authors Guild (found via Copycense). Have they come to their senses, or have they just not realized it yet?

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: authors, ebooks, ipad, kindle, text to speech
Companies: amazon, apple, authors guild

16 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Killer_Tofu (profile), 26 Mar 2010 @ 6:23am

Haven't realized
I think they haven't realized it yet. They don't seem like the brightest bunch. Wait until somebody starts shouting about how great it is to be able to listen to books. Then they will freak out about the progress we are making towards having better lives and freak out that they aren't being paid.
Then will come the lawsuits.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Dark Helmet (profile), 26 Mar 2010 @ 6:37am

Re: Haven\'t realized
Agreed. What's funny is that I was just looking into T2S software, particularly any free/open source options, so that I could throw what I've written at it and hear a crude example of what it would sound like if it were an audiobook.

More importantly, one of the things writers know is that the best way to determine if the dialogue you've written is any good is to hear it aloud. Normally this means either saying it aloud yourself, which is the worst of the options, or having family/friends read it aloud as if you were reciting lines in a play. But if the voice inflection and modulation is any good on this software, as in if it doesn't sound like a speak and spell, this could be a GREAT tool for authors to use.

Let's hope the AG doesn't take a big steamy shit on this the way they have in the past....
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 26 Mar 2010 @ 6:47am

Re: Re: Haven't realized
I selected your post and had Safari say it aloud and it sounded like shit.

Of course the voices that come with Mac OSX are not very good. Cepstral has some better ones (including my favorite: Dog!) but I don't want to shell out that much for just a voice.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Matty, 26 Mar 2010 @ 6:50am

Things we have not realized yet for 500 Alex.

Only a matter of time.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
OldGeek, 26 Mar 2010 @ 7:02am

A bit Different
Won't happen this time, Apple will do what they want because they have well paid lawyers.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
mjb5406 (profile), 26 Mar 2010 @ 7:06am

Re: A bit Different
My sentiments exactly... Even though Amazon is big, they really don't have pockets as deep as Steve Jobs... nior does Jeff Bezos have the incendiary temper Jobs has!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
mikez (profile), 26 Mar 2010 @ 7:09am

Re: Re: A bit Different
I don't think it's the lawyers as a threat as much as it is the PR and Marketing of Apple that you don't want to go against.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Andrew (profile), 26 Mar 2010 @ 7:45am

Or maybe they just like Apple's book pricing / revenue sharing model. :)

Perhaps we can expect publishers to release two versions of each book, just like iTunes' DRM free tracks.

$9.99 for the book
$11.99 for the book with text-to-speech allowed
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 26 Mar 2010 @ 9:01am

Will The Authors Guild Freak Out About Text To Speech On The iPad?

No!
Steve Jobs can do no wrong in the eyes of the artsy types.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 26 Mar 2010 @ 9:06am

Re:
"I wrote my most recent novel on a MacBook! I love Apple! Amazon? You mean that company that rips off my publisher?"
[ link to this | view in thread ]
davec, 26 Mar 2010 @ 9:14am

This is how Apple describes the text to speech feature:

iBooks works with VoiceOver, the screen reader in iPad, so it can read you the contents of any page.

It's interesting that they chose to say "any page." I'm guessing that the text-to-speech is limited to the current page rather than 'start reading and stop when I say to'. If you want to hear the next page you will need to go to the next page and start the text-to-speech again.

Hopefully I'm wrong.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 26 Mar 2010 @ 9:27am

Re: Re:
"I wrote my most recent novel on a MacBook! I love Apple! Amazon? You mean that company that rips off my publisher?"

Exactly. Anyone who is writing a nastygram to Apple on their MacBook is obviously going to pause and think a bit.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
JackOfShadows (profile), 26 Mar 2010 @ 11:44am

Hilarious!
Well, I hope they have deeeeep pockets and go after M$ first. I've been using Microsoft Reader pretty much since it came out (2003?) and the first thing you notice on the page after the text is the text to speech reader at the bottom. As these things go, it's not that bad. Mi Amiga was much better, but.... Given that I'm facing total paralysis in the not too distant future, text to speech as well as voice-command and speech to text are important considerations here which is why I now restrict any documentation or literature downloads to something that I can feed to an adequete narrator or convert (thanks MS for the free Word to .LIT converter).

Two final questions. One: I wonder how long the statute of limitations is on copyright infringement if copyright or other infringement this is? Two: If I feed a book to Office (no conversion) and have it narrate it to me, does that violate the DMCA vis-a-vis cirvumvention?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Some Dude, 26 Mar 2010 @ 12:02pm

Yesterday I told a sever dyslexic person the iPad will have text to speech for books and she nearly cried with joy. She has never been able to read an entire book dude to her condition. Now she does not need to sit in front of a computer or carry a laptop just to read a book.
With Apple backing the text to speech, as well as the blind foundation and now dyslexic's the authors guild would do well to stay quite.

On a side note the spelling of word dyslexic must be a cruel joke for a dyslexic person to spell.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 26 Mar 2010 @ 2:03pm

Re:
Books may be only one page long. One very long page but a page.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
alternatives(), 27 Mar 2010 @ 7:18am

And Android has text to speech also
Only a matter of time before someone comes out with a tablet-style Android.
[ link to this | view in thread ]