Allow Everyone Access to E-books - Petition by the Reading Rights Coalition - Classroom 2.02024-03-29T07:45:59Zhttps://www.classroom20.com/forum/topics/allow-everyone-access-to?feed=yes&xn_auth=noContext (and personal comment…tag:www.classroom20.com,2009-04-05:649749:Comment:3217192009-04-05T22:37:29.474ZClaude Almansihttps://www.classroom20.com/profile/calmansi
Context (and personal comment):<br />
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Andrew wrote a blog post here, <a href="http://www.classroom20.com/profiles/blogs/649749:BlogPost:95508">A Thought About The Kindle E-Book Reader</a>, on Jan. 9, 09.<br />
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In February, Amazon rolled out Kindle 2.0, whose text-to-speech feature raised the ire of the Author's Guild, who said it was tantamount to offering audio books, and hence subject to the payment of separate audio rights. Blind and reading-disabled people's associations, but also the EFF and several…
Context (and personal comment):<br />
<br />
Andrew wrote a blog post here, <a href="http://www.classroom20.com/profiles/blogs/649749:BlogPost:95508">A Thought About The Kindle E-Book Reader</a>, on Jan. 9, 09.<br />
<br />
In February, Amazon rolled out Kindle 2.0, whose text-to-speech feature raised the ire of the Author's Guild, who said it was tantamount to offering audio books, and hence subject to the payment of separate audio rights. Blind and reading-disabled people's associations, but also the EFF and several writers, disputed the Authors' Guild's claim.<br />
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However, Amazon, while still maintaining that the text-to-speech of the Kindle 2 was fully legal, chose to cave in and give authors and publishers the possibility to disable the text-to-speech in their e-books for the Kindle 2. Random House, for instance, has chosen to do so for all its books.<br />
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Hence the petition by the Reading Rights Coalition above.<br />
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Actually, the Kindle 2 is unusable by blind people (no keyboard shortcuts), it is DRM'd to the gills (impossible to transfer the Kindle e-books to your computer, even impossible to transfer <b>your</b> texts or the texts you legitimately own to the Kindle except by coughing up again to Amazon to have them transfer your stuff. And even if you could transfer the Kindle e-books to your computer, you couldn't read them there because they are in a proprietary, Kindle-only format. And Discovery is suing Amazon saying the DRM for the Kindle is under their (Discovery's) patent. So this looks rather like the final dinosaurs' battle in Jurassic Park.<br />
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However, the preposterous and dangerous attempt to pass off the use of text-to-speech as equivalent to offering audio books must be tackled first. Hence the petition.<br />
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PS: I'm gathering some links about the Kindle 2 and its text-to-speech under <a href="http://www.diigo.com/user/calmansi/kindle2">diigo.com/user/calmansi/kindle2</a>