One of the new experimental features (a text to voice feature that reads in a computer-generated voice) of the new Kindle 2 from Amazon has the Author's Guild in an uproar. (See additional article here)
Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, said of the feature: "They don't have the right to read a book out loud....That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law."
4 comments:
I find it hard to agree that a text-to-voice is the equivalent to a trained voice actor, but with money flowing so many places OTHER THAN the writer, I can see sticking up for the Author's Guild's argument just the same.
Jake ---
I can certainly see both sides to the argument as well. The way I see it too though is that this is one of those gray areas when it comes to copyright. In this instance it's a case of the law not keeping up with the technology.
I think authors should get over themselves. They're all rich whiny jerks. Just look at people like King and Patterson. They never have to worry about money.
Anon --- while you certainly make a valid point that King and Patterson have a lot of money, there are many more published authors out there who have to hold day jobs simply because they're not making enough to live on writing alone. It's not an easy thing to make a living off writing, especially with the market being saturated with books the way it is right now.
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