http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/ Engadget Comments for Authors Guild president: Kindle's a swindle http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:01PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/

]]>Feb 25th 2009 2:07PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:08PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:31PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:57PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/
If TOM is reading it then there's no performance and no actor to pay. I see why they feel they have to go after amazon on this one, but I want them to lose. This could lead to other ridiculous rulings. Any time someone sells an electronic version of a book they need to know that it could be read by a computer voice. It should just be part of those rights.]]>Feb 25th 2009 3:06PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/
Corrected.

I don't even believe audiobooks are that big of a market. Some people like them, some (blind) people need them, but most people just don't get the point. I tried an audiobook once. I never got in to it because I decided my "Bob Marley and the Wailers discography" playlist was more worth my time.]]>Feb 25th 2009 3:42PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 4:08PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 4:57PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 26th 2009 1:28PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:02PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/
Anyway, using a popular, widely-available technology on our media is simply fair use. This is like publishers suing a magnifying glass maker because magnifying glasses detract from large-print book sales.]]>Feb 25th 2009 3:14PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/
How on earth would a logical human being who listened to the Kindles speech voice would ever compare it to a real, human, well acted, un-robotic, emotional tone told story in an audiobook?!

They just want to find any reason to increase the cost, that's what it's all about.]]>Feb 25th 2009 2:05PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/
It's pretty simple: They're trying to preempt a future problem before it becomes one.]]>Feb 25th 2009 4:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/
On that topic, though, I've recently been really impressed by the Festival project.
Check this out: http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/cgi-out//ttsXg_1U0.wav
If that page is dead (as it may be), just copy and paste some random writing into here: http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/morevoices.html]]>Feb 25th 2009 4:45PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 4:56PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://tts.loquendo.com/ttsdemo/default.asp?page=id&voice=Susan]]>Feb 25th 2009 7:09PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/
Gee, there is one company that has great idea and all that happens is that now everyone tries to extract as much money as possible. IFPI, RIAA now the Authors Guild...]]>Feb 25th 2009 2:06PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/
Bottomline, Audiobook people, quit yer bitchin until it's actually become a problem. The damn thing just came out.]]>Feb 25th 2009 2:06PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:07PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:08PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:08PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:20PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:31PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/
Have you even read Patel's piece above? Roy's concern is one of long-term effect. He's considering an abstraction known as "the future", and how it may affect the careers of himself and his kind. He was put into his position to do precisely what he is doing, and by all accounts, is doing it well, or to the best of his ability. This is the point where we applaud his tenacity.

For Kurt 2:08: Forget the airline&auto industries, all real value is up-stream -> oil pulls those (purse) strings.

For TipTup 2:16: Wow, insightful, I would now posit that the Author's guild has a lobby institution that rivals the oil industry.

For Robrain 2:22: This is not a company, it's a professional organization: Think screen-actor's guild. They do not have a business model. They do work, and they have a right to recompense as per medium it is consumed in. It's not the case now, but when text-to speech quality is brought to a natural level, this will be a fair issue of who is owed what for they're labor.

Disclosure:

I'm a bit of a techno-luddite I own a cell-phone, love me some intarwebs, never owned an i-pod, never will, and will never consider a kindle worthwhile outside of it's use in assisting people who cannot physically open a book and read (which necessarily include the illiterate). Yes, you can claim some environmental impact, but I'll bet on the scale tipping in favor of books if you actually considered putting a "re-usable" kindle in the hands of everyone on the planet.]]>Feb 25th 2009 3:10PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:08PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/]]>Feb 25th 2009 2:28PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:16PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 9:32PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/
The reason we don't have it now (and won't for the foreseeable future) is because speech (especially a performance) from plain text is a mind-bogglingly complex thing to accomplish. Reading requires you to take these abstract words and build them into characters and concepts that play out in your head. You understand when something is light and whimsical or when to slow down and make a dramatic pause. You can figure out who is speaking and give them a slightly different voices. Also, you need to take into account things like slang, writers who spell out accents, and people like Douglas Adams who play with language to the point of breaking.

Basically, we'd need to create a way better version of Data from Star Trek to accomplish what the Authors Guild is worried about.

Now, you could accomplish a very similar result using some clever markup ("pensively" or "angrily" instead of bold or italic) - but that would clearly not be the same thing at all as what's going on here and would already be covered under existing law.]]>Mar 2nd 2009 12:41PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Mar 2nd 2009 12:58PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/
Does the ability to open up books not available on the audiobook market to the blind not count for anything?

oh never mind they got audible.]]>Feb 25th 2009 2:17PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/I read textbooks for the blind, it has nothing to do with the audiobook industry.]]>Feb 25th 2009 4:21PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/
Roy Blount Jr is a douchebag. I hope they sue Amazon and I hope Amazon's lawyers wipe the floor with their pathetic argument. The implications of this could actually be quite severe. If these douchecanoes were able to prevail, then what about the vision impaired for example? Can they no longer go to websites with copyrighted content and have the computer read it to them since that would somehow interfere with potential copyrighted audio content?

]]>Feb 25th 2009 2:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:20PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/
They will get one cut of profit -- No less than they do now.]]>Feb 25th 2009 2:22PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:19PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:22PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/
In order to manage risk we must first understand risk.

How do you spot risk? How do you avoid risk and what makes it so risky?

To understand risk, we must first define risk.

Risk is defined as--"]]>Feb 25th 2009 2:26PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:28PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/
Stupid greedy authors guild. All those saying RIAA of the next generation are right.]]>Feb 25th 2009 2:44PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/
Remember that when you buy an MP3 originally released on an album in the 70s. According to you the songwriter deserves nothing, just because time passed.]]>Feb 25th 2009 4:22PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/
When digital cameras came along, did analog camera manufacturers have a right to sue because fewer people were buying their products? When people stopped having papers delivered and began getting their news online, did the paper-boy union have a right to sue?]]>Feb 25th 2009 4:36PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/25/authors-guild-president-kindles-a-swindle/Feb 25th 2009 2:34PM