What constitutes e-book rights? PDF distribution? Kindle distribution? iPhone app distribution? XML format distribution? Because of the recent growth of these e-book formats, the general term "e-book rights" is just not easily--or clearly--defined.
With Amazon's announcement last week about the February 24 release date of the new-and-improved, more user friendly, slimmer Kindle (known as the Kindle2) came debate over e-book rights. See, the Kindle2 has a built-in text-to-audio feature that has the Authors Guild concerned about audio rights.
The question is: where in the gray area of e-book rights does an electronic device's ability to read text aloud fall? Is it an infringement upon publishers' ability to release audio versions of their books or sell the subsidiary audio rights?
I'm not sure I see how the Kindle2's text-to-audio feature differs much from the text-to-audio available on my laptop. I doubt the Kindle2's text-to-audio software can recreate the experience of listening to a book recorded by a live person, particularly if the software reads in a similar manner as my GPS or laptop. I don't know about anybody else, but I couldn't stand to sit through an entire 75,000+ word novel being read back to me by an electronic, simulated voice.
But, I could be wrong. Maybe many people will clamor for the Kindle2 when it releases next Tuesday, and maybe they will all fall in love with it's audio feature. If that's the case, then I think the Authors Guild will have reason to warn its members about negotiating e-book rights in their contracts.
Until then, the Kindle2's voice simulator is simply another uncertainty in a developing tenet of publishing that only time will be able to answer.
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2 comments:
One thing that's odd to me about people's resistance to the Kindle's text-to-speech function is that authors and publishers have waived audio rights forever for accessibility's sake. And the technology that seems whiz-bang neato (thought it still tends to sound very Stephen Hawking) has been available for decades in a device for the vision-impaired called the PAC Mate, which outputs dynamically-changing braille pins and reads text aloud at any speed. I had a blind roommate, and almost went bonkers hearing his PAC mate gurgle through volumes as he ran his fingers back and forth across the braille interface. He also got loads of bulky mail, ie: books on tape, which he also speed-read by playing in a pitch-adjusting player. What was unusual about such audiobooks was that they were not read by celebrities and boxed in fancy cardboard. No one was going to see it, so audiobooks for the blind are in utilitarian, indestructible bright green boxes and read by droll anybodies. And virtually EVERYTHING is available in this format, but only for the vision-impaired. A special ID makes the audio library accessible for the blind, and no one else. What made my blind roommate a particular challenge (besides that no glass or coffee cup was safe as he walked everywhere hands-out, feeling his way; oh, and his dog) was that he'd often be reading on his PAC Mate, browsing the net with a speech-enabled laptop and listening to an audiobook at high speed all at once. It was like a choir of robots, then -smash- a glass. Jeez, I feel like a jerk complaining about him. My point is that the means, the content and archives have been here all along. We have only to gouge out our eyes in Oedipole rage, and we won't need to buy a Kindle 2 anymore. We'll need a PAC Mate and fancy tape recorder.
Media rights is getting more and more complicated, but this kind of technology is not new and I can't see it replacing audio books. Authors (and their lawyers, agents, etc.) will just have to be more diligent when it comes to hammering out contracts, that's for sure.
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