Apologies for cross posting, but I thought those who find text to speech useful might be interested in this link:
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/kindle-2s-text-speech-infringes-copyright-says-authors-guild
In case that is too long and wraps, use http://tinyurl.com/alc2dq.
US Authors Guild is reportedly complaining about the text to speech built in to the latest Kindle-2 e-reader, soon to be available from Amazon. Just when some of us were raising a cheer about TTS going mainstream.
Personally, I would have thought that it is not an infringement of copyright in the UK at least. What they are supplying is not an audio performance but a text and, separately, a means for an individual to generate audio for their own use.
I don't think that that could be called copying ("in any material form") or a public performance. If Kindle allows you to extract the audio to your iPod, for example, then maybe that would be copying. But in an audio context that would come under the personal copying ("format shifting") which is now being legalised after the Gowers report. But I'm not a lawyer.
I hope that authors and the publishing industry aren't going to think they should resist this development or try to extract a levy, as they did with audio and video tapes.
Ian Litterick
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