Amazon retreats on Kindle's text-to-speech issue

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Amazon retreats on Kindle’s text-​​to-​​speech issue | Digital Media — CNET News:

Apparently, Amazon won’t fight the pub­lish­ing indus­try on the issue of whether the Kindle 2’s text-​​to-​​speech func­tion vio­lates copyright.

The retailer, which makes the pop­u­lar Kindle electronic-​​book reader, announced late Friday that the com­pany is mod­i­fy­ing sys­tems to allow authors and pub­lish­ers to decide whether to enable Kindle’s text-​​to-​​speech func­tion on a per-​​title basis.

Amazon starts its press release with tough talk. “Kindle 2’s exper­i­men­tal text-​​to-​​speech fea­ture is legal,” Amazon wrote. “No copy is made, no deriv­a­tive work is cre­ated, and no per­for­mance is being given.”

But then the com­pany says: “We strongly believe many rights hold­ers will be more com­fort­able with the text-​​to-​​speech fea­ture if they are in the driver’s seat,” Amazon said.

There is no mis­tak­ing what hap­pened here: Amazon caved. For Kindle own­ers inter­ested in the text-​​to-​​speech fea­ture, the reader just lost value.

See also:

• Copyright Fight Brewing Over Amazon’s Kindle 2

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