Amazon Uses DMCA To Try To Block Other Ebooks From Getting On Your Kindle

from the joining-the-dark-side dept

Slashdot points us to the rather unfortunate news that Amazon has sent a DMCA takedown notice to MobileRead, concerning a link that site had to a small piece of software that would allow ebooks purchased elsewhere (other than Amazon) to work on the Kindle. There are a number of issues here, all of which seem troubling.

First, MobileRead never hosted the software in question, but merely had links to the tool and some instructions. Such a takedown is only supposed to be used for sites that actually have the infringing material. However, thanks to the wonderful chilling effects of the DMCA, MobileRead removed the links.

Second, it's not at all clear how this script violates the DMCA. It doesn't remove copy protection at all. It just serves to open up the device for other eBooks to be used on the device. All too often we've been seeing the DMCA used in cases like this, where companies are treating the DMCA's anti-circumvention clauses to mean that they can stop just about any script they don't like from being available. This is clearly not what the DMCA was intended to do.

Third, the script was useful for allowing legally obtained ebooks from other stores to be read on the device. In other words, it was not a tool for copyright infringement, but for reading legally obtained works. This is a massive problem with the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause: it makes circumvention itself illegal, even if the circumvention is used for non-infringing purposes.

Fourth, Amazon's decision to send a DMCA takedown, in light of all of the above, is bothersome. One would hope that a company like Amazon wouldn't be quite so aggressive in trying to block out competition, in such ways -- especially to the extent of abusing copyright law. There have been a bunch of lawsuits in the past that have pretty much all said using the DMCA solely for anti-competitive purposes is not a legitimate use of the DMCA -- hopefully, someone can send Amazon's lawyers the various cases to make it clear to them that they're on the wrong side of the law here.

Filed Under: chilling effects, copyright, dmca, ebooks, kindle, mobileread
Companies: amazon

That Was Quick: Amazon Launches Kindle Books For iPhone

from the better-than-lock-in dept

While we've been wondering why publishers would agree to lock themselves into Amazon's ebook system via DRM, one possible dampener was the high price of the Kindle device itself. At $359... you need to read a lot of books to make that a worthwhile purchase. And, plenty of people have been asking whether other platforms -- most notably the iPhone -- might start to eat into the Kindle's market. It might not be quite as nice for reading books, but it's a device people already carry around. So, rather than denying that the competition existed, just weeks after introducing the second generation Kindle, Amazon will now allow Kindle books to be purchased for reading on an iPhone. The process is a little cumbersome, and the experience isn't quite as good, but you have to hand it to Amazon for recognizing that it's better to try to co-opt the competition rather than let it take you over (if only other businesses could learn that same lesson). Yet, if I'm a book publisher -- again, this is a bad sign. It gives Amazon even more power in the market and more leverage in the future. Giving Amazon lock-in via DRM may turn out to be the dumbest move some publishers ever made. If they had focused on open standards then there might be real competition and a lot more interest in ebooks.

Filed Under: ebooks, iphone, kindle
Companies: amazon, apple

Amazon Gives In To Ridiculous Authors Guild Claim: Allows Authors To Block Text-To-Speech

from the and-here's-how-we-shoot-ourselves-in-the-foot dept

Well here's an unfortunate surprise. Following the ridiculous claims of the Authors Guild that automated reading aloud of ebooks using text-to-speech software is a violation of copyright, Amazon has agreed to back down and make the TTS feature optional on a per-book basis. The company issued a statement explaining why it believes that there is no copyright violation at all, but is still making the feature optional:

Kindle 2's experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given. Furthermore, we ourselves are a major participant in the professionally narrated audiobooks business through our subsidiaries Audible and Brilliance. We believe text-to-speech will introduce new customers to the convenience of listening to books and thereby grow the professionally narrated audiobooks business.

Nevertheless, we strongly believe many rights-holders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver's seat.

Therefore, we are modifying our systems so that rightsholders can decide on a title by title basis whether they want text-to-speech enabled or disabled for any particular title.

While this does, effectively, allow the copyright holders to shoot themselves in the foot yet again, it's disappointing that the company wasn't at least willing to stand up for its right to offer such a feature without needing permission.

Meanwhile, if you don't mind the temptation to bang your head against the wall repeatedly, you can read an interview the Authors Guild's Paul Aiken conducted with Engadget about this whole thing. What's amazing is his inability to even understand how having a computer read aloud a book is no different than a person reading aloud the book or the Kindle reading aloud the book. He seems to think each is a different case that deserves different rights (and, of course, different licenses).

Filed Under: authors guild, books, copyright, kindle, paul aiken, text-to-speech
Companies: amazon

Why Are Book Publishers Making The Same Mistake The Record Labels Made With Apple?

from the we've-seen-this-movie-before,-and-it-doesn't-end-well dept

Back in 2005, we noted that Apple's dominance over the online music space, which upset the record labels tremendously, was actually the record labels' own fault for demanding DRM. That single demand created massive lock-in and network effects that allowed Apple to completely dominate the market. If the record labels had, instead, pushed for an open solution, then anyone else could have built stores/players to work as well, and it could have minimized Apple's ability to control the market. Yes, everyone is now opening up (including Apple), but it took a long time, and Apple had already established its dominant position.

So why are book publishers doing the same thing?

Farhad Manjoo has an interesting article in Slate where he notes that publishers are worried about Amazon turning into "the Apple of the book industry," yet at the same time, they're the ones who are pushing for DRM and limitations that will effectively lock users in to Amazon's ebook platform for a long time. If the publishers had insisted on more open solutions, then a real competitive market could develop. That would be better for everyone. As great as the new Kindle is, it's still rather expensive. Allowing others to enter the market would lead to greater innovation -- making it easier for more people to get into the ebook reader market, and open up plenty of new opportunities for publishers. But the dumb and pointless infatuation with "DRM" and "protecting" works will basically hand the market over to Amazon for many years, and get many folks locked into to Amazon's Kindle platform, even when more open solutions finally start to become popular.

Filed Under: drm, ebooks, kindle, lock-in, publishers
Companies: amazon, apple

Authors Guild Continues To Falsely Claim That Reading Aloud On A Kindle Violates Audio Rights

from the which-rights-exactly? dept

Roy Blount Jr. is a funny man. He appears regularly on the radio show Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me..., and is one of their funnier panelists. But, unfortunately, I don't think he was joking when he wrote a silly Op-Ed for the NY Times defending the Authors Guild's stance that having a Kindle use text-to-speech to read aloud is somehow a violation under copyright law. Blount, who's the President of the Guild, seem to be arguing not from a legal perspective, but from a "but this is how we want it to be" perspective. That's because he has almost no legal argument at all. Using text-to-speech to read text you legally own aloud is not copyright infringement. It's not a "fixed" version of the material, and it's not a public performance. So, rather than come up with a legal justification for such a ridiculous claim, Blount resorts to this: "audio books are a billion-dollar market."

This is the "but the old way of doing business made us so much money, so any innovation must be illegal" argument. You know what else was a big market at one time? Horse & buggies. And Gramophones. And 8-tracks. But technology made them all obsolete at some point or another, and that wasn't illegal. You don't get to cling to an old business model just because it made you lots of money. Sometimes new technologies come along, and they provide a better experience for people, and the market changes. Already it's a stretch to say that a TTS read-aloud of a book really "competes" with an audio book, but even if it did one day, that doesn't necessarily make it illegal just because Blount and the Authors Guild wishes it were so.

Finally, Blount responds to criticism that the Authors Guild's stance goes against readers for the blind or the ability to read aloud to your kid at night. He basically just says "no, that's not true." But he doesn't explain why. That's because there is no good explanation, based on what the Authors Guild has said concerning "audio rights." Basically, the Authors Guild is trying to pretend copyright says what it wants it to say, rather than what it actually says. And, when people have pointed out examples of how the Authors Guild's interpretation of copyright is bogus, their response is "well, we didn't mean it for that." They are, of course, missing the point. Those examples aren't to show the full impact of what the Authors Guild is claiming. They're to show that the Authors Guild is wrong in what it thinks copyright grants them. For a group of "Authors" they seem to have trouble with basic reading comprehension.

Update: John Paczkowski has a great post on this, comparing Blount's statements to those of John Philip Sousa a century ago, complaining about the introduction of "playing and talking machines" and how they would destroy music.

Filed Under: audio rights, authors guild, books, copyright, kindle, roy blount jr., text-to-speech

Authors Guild Digs Itself In Deeper Concerning Kindle Text-To-Speech

from the stop-digging dept

We were among many different sites that laughed at the ridiculous assertions by Authors Guild executive director Paul Aiken's attempt to rewrite copyright law concerning the "right" for people with a legally purchased ebook to have a Kindle ebook reader with text-to-speech read the book aloud. Aiken said:

"They don't have the right to read a book out loud. That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law."

This is, of course, incorrect. To demonstrate how incorrect it was, we applied it to other scenarios: such as reading to your kids at night. This wasn't to suggest that we actually thought Aiken meant you couldn't read to your kids at night, but to show how wrong the original comment was. Amusingly, the Authors Guild seems to have thought we actually believed this, and has issued an attempted clarification, which only serves to make things worse.

First, the Authors Guild isn't backing down -- but says it's "studying this matter closely." Instead, it recommends that authors who haven't already made ebook agreements avoid doing so. Because, you know, when you're an author the best possible thing is to make it more difficult for people who want to read your book to get it. That doesn't seem very smart. All because someone might listen to their Kindle read it aloud? I would think that the potential of lost readers would be a much bigger concern.

Furthermore, in clarifying that, yes, indeed, reading to your kids is legal, the Guild claims:

The remarks have been interpreted by some as suggesting that the Guild believes that private out-loud reading is protected by copyright. It isn't, unless the reading is being done by a machine. And even out-loud reading by a machine is fine, of course, if it's from an authorized audio copy.

I'm having trouble seeing how that's correct, though, it would be great if the usual assortment of IP lawyers chimed in on this one. Having a machine read to you in the privacy of your own home isn't a performance, so there's no performance rights issues. Then if you go down the whole list of rights covered by copyright, none of them seem to apply. It seems that the Authors Guild is making up a new right (watch out, now the lobbyists will try to get it added): the "you can't do anything innovative unless you pay extra" right.

Filed Under: authors guild, books, copyright, kindle, paul aitken, text-to-speech
Companies: amazon

Why The eBook Industry Needs More Piracy

from the push-the-market-forward dept

Bobbie Johnson, over at the Guardian, does an excellent job of explaining why ebooks really haven't taken off yet: there's just not enough piracy going on. With the launch of the second generation of Amazon's Kindle ebook reader, we're getting another round of stories about ebooks. They've done marginally better recently, but the Kindle is hardly making strides that match with the iPod -- a device to which it's frequently compared.

Johnson points out that (as we've seen elsewhere), piracy is often a leading indicator of what consumers are doing with new technologies. It's a great way to find out what people actually want, and then you can build around that. That's what made the iPod (and eventually iTunes) successful. But the Kindle doesn't have that going for it. Instead of trying to dive into a new market that's already happening, it's trying to drag the market along -- creating the space as it goes. That's a much more difficult sell. It doesn't mean that ebooks can't or won't become a much bigger deal. But it suggests that the market is quite different, and won't develop nearly as quickly.

Filed Under: ebooks, kindle, piracy
Companies: amazon

According To Author's Guild, You Cannot Read Books Out Loud

from the player-pianos-anyone? dept

As you may know, when player pianos were first introduced, there was a massive fear among musicians that it would be the death of the live music industry. With a player piano, why would anyone ever need to go see a live performance again? In fact, the roots of our rather draconian modern copyright law come, in part, from this dispute. You can see it time and time again, as each new technology comes along, someone freaks out, demands an extra layer of gov't granted rights (and often a compulsory license) and only later discovers that these "threats" were really opportunities all along.

The latest such example comes from an absolutely extraordinary statement from Paul Aitken, the executive director of the Authors Guild, upon hearing that the new Amazon Kindle has an experimental text-to-speech factor. Rather than think about how this feature might expand readership, he immediately insisted that it's illegal to use it:

"They don't have the right to read a book out loud. That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law."

By that reasoning pretty much any use of text-to-speech software is illegal, which would make for a fascinating legal case. And, actually, if you take that reasoning further, any reading outloud from a book that is not yours is also a violation of copyright law, according to Aitken. Read to your kids at night? Watch out for the Authors Guild police banging down your door. I would think that in purchasing a book, some of the associated rights that come along with it are the right to either read it aloud or have someone else read it aloud to you, but perhaps we'll soon be hearing about a special new "text-to-speech" right with a special compulsory license that will add a nice little extra charge to every book you buy. In the meantime, who put the Luddites in charge of the Authors Guild?

Filed Under: authors guild, books, copyright, kindle, paul aitken, text-to-speech

Before We Start Regulating ISPs, Maybe It Would Be Good Idea To Define Them

from the forethought,-ignored dept

Many people are expecting that the debate over net neutrality will kick up again in the new year. The senator behind previous attempts to enact it plans to reintroduce legislation for it, while the incoming presidential administration appears to be much more supportive of the idea than the outgoing one. Before jumping in with both feet, though, let's pause for a second (and read Tim Lee's paper), and take a moment to actually figure out just what constitutes an ISP these days, and who would be bound by any net-neutrality regulations.

An interesting piece at Network World raises the example of Amazon: since it supplies a network connection to Kindle owners, would net-neutrality regulation force it to somehow open up the internet access on the device and allow Kindle owners to connect to other e-book vendors? This is an important point to consider, given how mobile operators are all talking about their plans to "open" their networks and get wireless radios embedded in all sorts of consumer electronics. If, say, Netflix decided to sell a device for accessing its streaming-movie service over mobile networks, and used a similar model to Amazon, in which the wireless service was included, would Netflix be an ISP? Would net-neutrality regulations force it to let users access other movie services? The general trend seems to be that the number of companies that could conceivably be considered ISPs -- especially with some poorly worded legislation -- is set to grow significantly. But net-neutrality regulation could end up stifling business models, innovation and new devices and services if it's not carefully considered. Somehow, though, it's hard to imagine there will be careful consideration in the rush to score political brownie points.

Filed Under: definitions, isp, kindle, net neutrality, regulations

Opening Amazon's Walled Garden Could Prove Tricky

from the wireless-worries dept

Mike Arrington offers some unsolicited advice to Amazon about how to expand the market for the Kindle. In a nutshell, he thinks Amazon should aggressively license the Kindle hardware specs to third parties, and allow authorized vendors to use the Kindle brand. Amazon would require licensees to use the Kindle store, and would share the associated revenues. There's a lot to be said for a plan like this. The key to long-run dominance of many high-tech industries is to be the platform around which other firms build their products. Amazon's got a solid product with a fair amount of buzz at the moment, but that could easily evaporate if another company comes along with a more compelling product. Getting a lot of third-party vendors to build products around the Kindle ecosystem could help establish it as the standard e-book platform.

The difficulty with opening up the platform is that the Kindle business model—particularly the wireless aspect—depends on limiting the Kindle's functionality. Amazon is able to offer free cellular access for the life of the product in part because it controls the applications that will run on it, and can therefore guarantee to cell carriers that users won't start running bandwidth-hogging applications on it. And Amazon is willing to pick up customers' bandwidth bills in part because it charges premium prices for content, some of which is available for free off the open Internet. So if Amazon licensed the Kindle name to third parties, it would have two choices. It could tell the vendors they're on their own in terms of negotiating their own wireless plans, which would be a headache for the vendors. Or, if Amazon wants to bring third parties in under its own wireless umbrella, it will presumably need to impose some draconian restrictions on the functionality of the Kindle clones. And how many vendors are going to want to sell Kindle clones that have all the same limitations as the original?

Filed Under: kindle, open, platforms, walled gardens
Companies: amazon