Amazon retreats on Kindle's text-to-speech issue

[John Dishon]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10184406-93.html

Well, that solves that problem.

[John McFetridge]

That debate's going on over thousands of websites. Google "copyfight" sometime....

[B.R.Stateham]

Kinda makes you wonder if the gee-whiz kids at Amazon have been in here listening to the on-going debate Kindle. Or, like most of us, am I getting paranoid?

[I. J. Parker]

Hah! See there?

Thanks, John D.

[John McFetridge]

Seems right. It isn't really an issue of copyright law, it's an issue of contract law. Writers and publishers have contracted the audio rights and this technology would interfere with those contracts.

Should the text-to-speech technology get good enough, then future contracts won't seperate e-book and audio book rights. (something will have to be done for retroactive rights, but again, that's a contract law issue not a copyright issue)

I said on another forum that my dream as a writer is to be able to sell a single file of my book that the consumer can use in any way they like - e-book, audio, even printing out in any format they like at the POD store at the mall (or even at home). Someday in my sci-fi view of the future, there may even be animation technology that will allow the consumer themselves to turn the novel into a movie - maybe even cast it themselves and pick the music and everthing. Okay, so that's not likely to happen soon, it could happen someday.