‘Kindle Swindle’ and the Authors Guild
p2pnet news view P2P:- Kindle 2 can read books aloud. And Kindle 2 is not paying anyone for audio rights.
That seems to be the bottom line bottomline in what’s being called the Kindle Swindle.
The Kindle is a wireless, portable reading device, p2pnet reported in 2007.
The newly released Kindle 2, however, handles text in and out.Vocally. And that’s a big problem, writes Roy Blount jr in a New York Times OpEd.
He’s president of the Authors Guild, “whose mission is to sustain book-writing as a viable occupation”.
True, he admits, “you can already get software that will read aloud whatever is on your computer. But Kindle 2 is being sold specifically as a new, improved, multimedia version of books – every title is an e-book and an audio book rolled into one. And whereas e-books have yet to win mainstream enthusiasm, audio books are a billion-dollar market, and growing. Audio rights are not generally packaged with e-book rights. They are more valuable than e-book rights. Income from audio books helps not inconsiderably to keep authors, and publishers, afloat.
Now, “What the guild is asserting is that authors have a right to a fair share of the value that audio adds to Kindle 2’s version of books,” he says, noting, “For this, the guild is being assailed,” specifically citing the National Federation of the Blind, which on its web page states »»»
Although the Authors Guild claims that it supports making books accessible to the blind, its position on the inclusion of text-to-speech technology in the Kindle 2 is harmful to blind people. The Authors Guild says that having a book read aloud by a machine in the privacy of one`s home or vehicle is a copyright infringement. But blind people routinely use readers, either human or machine, to access books that are not available in alternative formats like Braille or audio.
Up until now, no one has argued that this is illegal, but now the Authors Guild says that it is. This is absolutely wrong. The blind and other readers have the right for books to be presented to us in the format that is most useful to us, and we are not violating copyright law as long as we use readers, either human or machine, for private rather than public listening. The key point is that reading aloud in private is the same whether done by a person or a machine, and reading aloud in private is never an infringement of copyright.
But, Bount argues in his NYT piece, “publishers, authors and American copyright laws have long provided for free audio availability to the blind and the guild is all for technologies that expand that availability. (The federation, though, points out that blind readers can’t independently use the Kindle 2’s visual, on-screen controls.) But that doesn’t mean Amazon should be able, without copyright-holders’ participation, to pass that service on to everyone.”
He adds »»»
The guild is also accused of wanting to profiteer off family bedtime rituals. A lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation sarcastically warned that “parents everywhere should be on the lookout for legal papers haling them into court for reading to their kids.”
For the record: no, the Authors Guild does not expect royalties from anybody doing non-commercial performances of “Goodnight Moon.” If parents want to send their children off to bed with the voice of Kindle 2, however, it’s another matter.
Stay tuned.
p2pnet – Amazon Kindle vs Canada Kindle?, November 22, 2007
New York Times – The Kindle Swindle?, February 24, 2009
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February 25th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
The very definition of “book” has been distorted.
The “audio” (a quality the actual book doesn’t possess) is nothing more than a “packaging feature”, or “delivery mechanism” at best.
All “book licensing” should end at the printed word. How that word is conveyed should be nobody’s business or concern.
It’s not like an actual, produced, audio TRACK that would complete a movie, complete with all the technical duties that go along with that (editing, filtering, etc.).
The book is complete without it, and the audio is created FROM that book. And now even that’s being done “automatically” by a glorified version of the classic scanner + OCR software combination, which also gets a license for itself as a product, and a license for the “product” it either creates or plays (depending on which part of the process you’re talking about).
The implications here are mind-boggling.
Will we now be expected to abide by SEPARATE licenses (audio and print) for the SAME product?
Will the simple act of reading the book aloud (whether to yourself or someone else) become “illegal”??
(What would that mean for schools?)
Licensing the audio rendition of a book is, quite simply, destructive thinking. (More like, NOT thinking at all, really.)
Just another way for the already, out-of-control copyright scene to keep strangling innovation and fair use, and continue to tie up our courts.
The whole practice of copyrighting really should be trashed, the more I look at it.
February 25th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
It’s like the DMCA has opened the flood gates for people to claim infringement! One person uses it, sues, wins, now everyone wants to control everything.
Hmm…. I am going to figure out a way to create and own the copyright to sue, speak, breathe, eat, sleep, write code, write music, etc… not the content, just the act. Then, when all the Guilds and **AA are out of business and dead and gone, I will destroy the copyright and free up everything to everyone! You can make money from art if people want to buy it because you bundled something worth paying for that can’t be replicated with it.
Anyone care to contribute cash to this cause?
February 25th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
The more I hear stories like this the less I want to comply with the desires of holders of copyrights.
The longer they fight the less a consumer I wish to be.
February 26th, 2009 at 9:00 am
Perhaps we should ask if reading a literary work in public is “performance” as defined in copyright law and if that is good for the public because it causes the creation of more literary works, the original purpose of copyright law.
We already know that copyright law is vague and confusing on almost everything, as if the law was made without taking into account the people that needed reading the laws before deciding how and if to use a copyrighted work. Then the law starts by saying the purpose is to advance the arts and then goes and does the opposite.
So, to rephrase the question, is reading, say a poem, on the radio without a public performance license from the author legal and a good idea? A question a radio producer must answer before airing a poem.
Before answering the question – is it a good idea? – many other sub questions questions have to be answered first. Some of these are:
- Is the reading of a poem on the radio “public performance?
- Is the poem in the public domain (PD)? and what is the cost of the required research to determine that?
- If not in the PD , how does one get a license and what is the total cost of obtaining the cost.
Now the problem is that there are no inexpensive answers to the questions due to the necessary legal research costs and that provokes a chain: radio producers will decide not to read poems over the radio, poem books will not get free publicity over the radio, fewer books will be sold, and fewer poems will be written. So the final effect is the opposite of what the copyright law was set out to do, so we are told.
Surely there is a no solution (unless the law is changed) copyright law situation here. Again, copyright reform is needed.
As to authors they may request book publishers to print on the books that free public performance is allowed but there are two problems here. Most book publishers will not buy the idea because they are too conservative (a reason why they are mostly doomed) and a “free performance” notice on book will only apply to new publications or editions only.
Thus, the position of book publishers on the reading Kindle is self defeating and authors are being swindled by the law that is allegedly there to protect their given -by copyright law- rights.
February 26th, 2009 at 10:09 am
@Rafael Venegas:
The copyright law is written in Lawyerese, which is a language few outside the law profession understand.
Here’s an article where a non-lawyer translates the copyright law, go to the “Letters” part after and see how the lawyer translates Lawyerese to English.
http://www.stereophile.com/reference/905copy/
February 26th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
“The copyright law is written in Lawyerese, which is a language few outside the law profession understand.”
I disagree, Robert.
Many inside the law profession cannot understand many aspects of copyright law because it makes no sense (in the many aspects). The proof is easy to see. Just take any copyright infringement case. You frequently have two or three interpretations of the law (by two layers and a judge) or the facts of the case. Surely if the law (or the jurisprudence used/cited) was not confusing you cannot have two or three interpretations as frequently as they are seen. Then courts frequently contradict each other on appeal.
Of course this is not solely a problem of copyright law. Most laws suffer the same problem, which is why so many lawyers are needed.
I still cannot figure out who owns the copyright and under which country’s law this is decides, of the photograph shot with my camera by an unknown passerby of my wife and I in front of the Eiffel Tower. I therefore do not know if I can post these photos over the Internet. There are billions of photographs like this one floating about (everyone has them) and I have yet to find a lawyer that knows the answer other than to say that you have to wait for a court decision, as the law makes no exception for the described situation.
Which is why I say that judges and others that say “ignorance is no excuse” are rather ignorant themselves, a judges know that courts frequently contradict each other and when that happens a judge was probably ignorant (if corruption was no involved).