We're not sure his tone or rhetoric are the most convincing, but Authors Guild president Roy Blount Jr. has a little op-ed in the New York Times today attempting to explain his organization's objection to the Kindle 2's text-to-speech features. If you read our little Know Your Rights piece, you already know what he's on about: the main problem is that Amazon isn't paying for both ebook and audiobook rights for Kindle content, and Roy's worried that eventually computerized text-to-speech will be good enough for consumers to eschew buying audiobooks entirely. Take a deep breath, count to ten, consider that audiobooks are a billion-dollar business, and you can sort of see where the Authors Guild is coming from -- Roy doesn't sound too crazy when he says he thinks "authors have a right to a fair share of the value that audio adds to Kindle 2's version of books."

What does this mean for you? Well, probably just higher prices in the short term, as we're guessing publishers will start increasing ebook license fees to cover what they think they're going to lose on audiobook sales, and Amazon and other ebook retailers will just pass those costs along. Lame, sure, but it's not the crackdown some were hysterically predicting -- Roy's pretty clear that the Authors Guild doesn't care about parents reading to kids or text-to-speech for the blind, just the Kindle's impact on the audiobook market. We'll see how Amazon and the Guild resolve this one over the next few months -- in the meantime, point your Kindle to the read link and blow Roy's mind by having Tom read the op-ed to you.

Hey, so does the Kindle 2's Read to Me text-to-speech feature really infringe on authors' copyrights?

It's nice to be back! It's been a while.

Yeah yeah. Get to it.

Okay, so the issue is that the Kindle 2's Read to Me feature obviously threatens the audiobook market, and while at first blush it seems like the Authors Guild has a pretty weak case when executive director Paul Aiken says things like "They don't have the right to read a book out loud," it's not necessarily as ridiculous as it seems.

Look, we fully understand that you're probably not ready to drop fresh coinage to upgrade your one-year young c510 or c530 navigation device, but why not treat it to a svelte hack that will have it acting like the new kids on the block? Yep, your aging Garmin can now sport the same text-to-speech capabilities as the newer c550 / c580 devices with just a little a good bit of internal tweaking. Considering that the elder machines boast less storage, yet TTS requires quite a bundle, you'll be forced to purge your GPS of unnecessary files in order to make it all fit, and aside from exposing yourself to the awful possibility of botching your portable tour guide, you'll also need to be comfortable with a long-winded process of implementing (and locking in) the changes. All in all, we can't complain with teaching old NAVs new tricks, but this one certainly isn't for the faint of heart. Hit the read link if you dare.

[Via NaviGadget]