Legal Research

Copyright, Again (and Again and Agian and …)

Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, like everyone else, had an article about the introduction of the Kindle 2. Among other things, it discussed the new text-to-voice feature, which reads the book aloud to you.  (Keep in mind, this is an ebook that you’ve already purchased.) Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, is not pleased:

“They don’t have the right to read a book out loud. That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”

I cannot resist reprinting here a comment from CrunchGear:

“You can react to real issues, Mr. Aiken, like wholesale book piracy in China, or you can keep kicking the shins of a company that has made the most money for authors since the invention of the printing press.”

And don’t forget Author’s Guild kicked Google as well for making books on library shelves accessible to people like you and me. These guys are as bad as the music labels.

Full post as published by Jenkins Webblits on February 11, 2009 (boomark / email).