A report in E-Reads by Michael Gaudet says that the Author's Guild is angry at Amazon's Kindle 2 for its read-aloud technology. What the Author's Guild is worried about is the effect it would have on its member's additional income stream from the audio book.Parents have always read to their children at home, teachers in the classroom and visually impaired readers have been using speech recognition software for several years now. None of this is an issue. But if someone goes on stage (or radio, or television) and reads a book for payment, wouldn't he (or she) be in violation of copyright?
There is this growing niche market for audio books often performed by the authors themselves, sold in CD box sets, to be played in car audio players or wherever. This is still a tiny market compared to the actual book, but it is obviously important, with separate audio rights often negotiated. Obviously, the Author's Guild is of the opinion that devices like the Kindle 2 will affect their income.
Speech recognition software has been around for a while and some computers come preinstalled with it. So at which point is the law broken? As it stands now, the digital 'voice' is pretty robotic. But we know that it is not going to stay that way for long as technology improves. What if one day they come up with a computer that sounds like Morgan Freeman or Barrack Obama? So, I am with the Author's Guild. Authors deserved to be paid for it.
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