Amazon decided to give publishers the final verdict on whether we will be able to hear someone narrate us the books we buy for Kindle 2. One thing comes to my mind.
Shouldn't publishers be looking to long term revenues and understand that text-to-speech is only the first experiment before speech recognition technology is fully scalable and cheap, which can only but increase the demand for books? Today we can only listen to a male or female computer voice but what if in the future we could hear any voice from any place in the world? What if we could hear a voice that reacts to emotions, to surprises, to terror, etc. I think Publishers that don't understand the power of this technology will fail as old marketing agencies failed to predict the power of search ads.
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I guess publishers DO understand the potential power of this feature.. it could wipe out their $1 billion audio book market ! According to Paul Allen, executive director of the Authors Guild, Kindle doesn't have the right to read out the book :) ! He says "That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law."
ReplyDeleteYes Suryabir, you are right. And they react by not permitting users experiment. They think they have the power to decide by law but yet one of the most probable outcomes is either they'll permit Amazon's voice or they will put their voices. So, what if Amazon lets users innovate by letting them put their voices once they have purchased the book... is there a law preventing that? I don't know but my feeling is that there is not (they already bought the book), anyway I would like someone to tell me. What if Amazon can make actors, singers, my grandma or any other good voice enlist? Is that against the law? Is giving people options against the law?
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