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By jdb, April 8, 2009

The Author’s Guild posted a response to the Reading Right’s Coalition’s protest yesterday:

http://www.authorsguild.org/advocacy/articles/kindle-accessibility.html

Some excerpts, providing some possible solutions to this problem and a reiteration of principles:

“There’s an easy technological fix here: those with certified disabilities could have a Kindle operating system that is subtly modified to permit voice output for all books, overriding any limitations put in place by publishers. This could work in conjunction with existing programs such as Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, Bookshare and the National Library Service.”

“Since step one would help only those with sufficient eyesight to navigate the current Kindle, we encourage Amazon or another e-book device manufacturer to make an e-book device with voice output capability that would be truly blind-accessible, with a Braille keyboard and audible menu commands.”

“Finally, we need to amend existing book contracts to allow voice-output access to others, including those with learning disabilities, that don’t qualify for special treatment under the Chafee Amendment. There’s no getting around the need to amend contracts: for the past 16 years, standard publishing contracts with most major trade publishers do not permit publishers to sell e-books bundled with audio rights. ”

“We will not, however, surrender our members’ economic rights to Amazon or anyone else. The leap to digital has been brutal for print media generally, and the economics of the transition from print to e-books do not look as promising as many assume. Authors can’t afford to start this transition to digital by abandoning rights.

Knowing how difficult the road ahead is for the already fragile economics of authorship, we are particularly troubled at how all this arose, with Amazon attempting to use authors’ audio rights to lengthen its lead in the fledgling e-book industry. We could not allow this rights grab to happen. Audio books are a billion dollar market, the rights for which are packaged separately from — and are far more valuable than — e-book rights.”

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By jdb, April 7, 2009

The Reading Rights Coalition, an organization consisting of advocacy groups for the visually impaired, is protesting today in front the Authors Guild offices – of all places. They feel that Amazon should have gone ahead with the Kindle’s TTS feature, which allowed people to hear an audio reading of a Kindle book. Frankly, it’s naive to blame the AG for Amazon’s decisions – publishers have their own rights and opinions about them as well, and not only that, Amazon owns several audiobook companies. Why are writers the fall guys?

This whole issue seems a little strange, because blind people can’t use the Kindle’s interface without assistance, so how many were using Kindles? Kurzweil’s devices are far superior, specifically designed for people with impaired vision and can read any book in print.

Aside from the existence of perfectly good reading devices that ought to be accessible for the blind, it doesnt seem too far fetched to create a device with braile keys, audio menuing and no display that can play ebooks specially coded for TTS – and not eye-reading. Created for people with disabilites, the device could be covered under medicare and medicaid, the Kindle is not and it is unlikely that it will be – it’s a general purpose device and medicare only covers devices specifically created for the disabled.

Most of the popular arguments we’re hearing against the AG’s position are spurious. The idea that the TTS is a non-issue becuase the TTS feature is still primitive is misleading. A few more generations of voice emulation and it will sound close enough to an audiobook for a lot of people. It’s best to deal with this now rather than later, IP law is like the law of the sea, if you don’t protect your rights you lose them.

Copyright is a thorny issue and the concept of derivative works is especially complex and easy to oversimplify in the light of emerging technologies. A perfect illustration for that – the website for the RRC specifically disallows derivative works. Too bad they don’t want to extend those rights to Authors.