Amazon Kindle Can Now Be Kept Quiet

Amazon first suggested that the idea of the Kindle's text-to-speech feature being illegal was was wrong, adding that it would cut into Amazon's own audiobooks business anyway.

"Kindle 2's experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given," said Amazon, in a short statement posted to its main site. "Furthermore, we ourselves are a major participant in the professionally narrated audiobooks business through our subsidiaries Audible and Brilliance. We believe text-to-speech will introduce new customers to the convenience of listening to books and thereby by grow the professionally narrated audiobooks business."

That aside, Amazon stated, it wants to make the Kindle situation more agreeable for everybody.

"We strongly believe many rightsholders would be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver's seat," Amazon said. "Therefore, we are modifying our systems so that rightsholders can decide on a title-by-title basis whether they want text-to-speech enabled or disabled for any particular title."

Amazon went on to say that it was already working to tweak the Kindle so that future shipments would allow for disabling.

"With this new level of control, publishers and authors will be able to decide for themselves whether it is in their commercial interests to leave text-to-speech enabled. We believe many will decide that it is," Amazon said.

The dustup over Kindle's text-to-speech centers around how the Kindle can read books aloud but, unlike standard audio book agreements, does not pay specific royalties to authors.

The president of the Author's Guild, Roy Blount Jr., attacked the Kindle in a New York Times op/ed (titled "The Kindle Swindle?") last Wednesday: "Serves readers, pays writers: so far, so good. But there's another thing about Kindle 2--its heavily marketed text-to-speech function. Kindle 2 can read books aloud. And Kindle 2 is not paying anyone for audio rights."

The Authors' Guild has advised authors to bring up the Kindle specifically in any ongoing and future contract negotiations.