Roy Blount, Junior can Kindle my Ass.
Mar. 1st, 2009 04:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogJust when you thought it was safe to go into the 21st century, along comes another raging band of troglodytes determined to keep us stuck back in the 19th. If that.
I didn't get to this debate until I thought it was over, and that common sense had prevailed. As if.
Amazon.com's new and updated Kindle reader comes with a cool new feature: an audio reader. You're not going to get the subtleties of the author's own reading, or the poetry brought to an audio book by the likes of a Jim Dale. Instead, you'll get a generic, synthetic voice sounding about as ethereal as the one telling you "for your last five transactions, press one" on your telephone banking site.
Or rather, you won't. Because the Authors Guild pitched a hissy about it, claiming that this application- applied to books which Amazon had already paid authors for the right to digitize and distribute in that form- would infringe on their audio book rights. Leading the charge over this Bridge to the 19th Century is that known curmudgeon Roy Blount, Junior, who stated his position in the Times earlier this week.
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.
(Sorry, Roy. Didn't mean to infringe on your rights by duplicating that. Certainly I never entered any agreement with you or the Times for the blog rights to your drivel. Hell, sue me for triple damages- three times nothing is still nothing.)
On the other side of this debate are authors I know as well and love far more, including Neil Gaiman and (here goes my membership in alt.wesley.die.die.die) Wil Wheaton, who understand the difference between an Audio Book and a book read aloud by a computer.
Nonetheless, Amazon caved- "cave" as in "surrender" rather than "place these Luddites still want us to live," even though both apply- and announced last week that it will disable the audio feature on any Kindle offering where the author demands same.
If there's one thing worse than a failure to advance, it's achieving an advance and having it taken away from you unfairly. Touchdowns and goals taken off the board. Incomplete Florida recounts. And here, a "play audio" feature that will display on your Kindle as "play audio" in light gray while not actually doing anything.
Let's see who else can be offended by these advancing technologies. Does Kindle have a brightness control on the display? Gotta disable THAT; it's the jurisdiction of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Next, the librarians will be demanding disruption of the search functions, since it's clearly their turf to look things up for people. And God help us if they start putting critical works onto these things; I've seen this exact argument before, and damned if I'm not gonna plagiarise it:
“We are quite definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons, and we want this machine off, and we want it off now!”
“What’s the problem?” said Lunkwill.
“I’ll tell you what the problem is mate,” said Majikthise, “demarcation, that’s the problem!”
“We demand,” yelled Vroomfondel, “that demarcation may or may not be the problem!”
“You just let the machines get on with the adding up,” warned Majikthise, “and we’ll take care of the eternal verities thank you very much. You want to check your legal position you do mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we’re straight out of a job aren’t we? I mean what’s the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?”
So what if Kindle can't do that. It's a slippery slope, is what it is, and that's what these obstructionists are gonna obstruct with. Just like last year's idiotic writer's strike, which killed one of my favorite shows and crippled another one, all over digital rights which so far have amounted to exactly three quarters of a bean, much less a hill. Or like the short-sighted terrorism depicted by Sigourney Weaver going all Gatekeeper on Mos Def and Jack Black in Be Kind Rewind by destroying the creative "sweded" knockoffs of their Veddy Propahly Copyrighted Material. Or the inanity of Prince attacking a Dancing Baby because the mommy was playing "Let's Go Crazy" in the background.
Why can't we all get along? ::waits for Rodney King to sue me for using that::
I didn't get to this debate until I thought it was over, and that common sense had prevailed. As if.
Amazon.com's new and updated Kindle reader comes with a cool new feature: an audio reader. You're not going to get the subtleties of the author's own reading, or the poetry brought to an audio book by the likes of a Jim Dale. Instead, you'll get a generic, synthetic voice sounding about as ethereal as the one telling you "for your last five transactions, press one" on your telephone banking site.
Or rather, you won't. Because the Authors Guild pitched a hissy about it, claiming that this application- applied to books which Amazon had already paid authors for the right to digitize and distribute in that form- would infringe on their audio book rights. Leading the charge over this Bridge to the 19th Century is that known curmudgeon Roy Blount, Junior, who stated his position in the Times earlier this week.
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.
(Sorry, Roy. Didn't mean to infringe on your rights by duplicating that. Certainly I never entered any agreement with you or the Times for the blog rights to your drivel. Hell, sue me for triple damages- three times nothing is still nothing.)
On the other side of this debate are authors I know as well and love far more, including Neil Gaiman and (here goes my membership in alt.wesley.die.die.die) Wil Wheaton, who understand the difference between an Audio Book and a book read aloud by a computer.
Nonetheless, Amazon caved- "cave" as in "surrender" rather than "place these Luddites still want us to live," even though both apply- and announced last week that it will disable the audio feature on any Kindle offering where the author demands same.
If there's one thing worse than a failure to advance, it's achieving an advance and having it taken away from you unfairly. Touchdowns and goals taken off the board. Incomplete Florida recounts. And here, a "play audio" feature that will display on your Kindle as "play audio" in light gray while not actually doing anything.
Let's see who else can be offended by these advancing technologies. Does Kindle have a brightness control on the display? Gotta disable THAT; it's the jurisdiction of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Next, the librarians will be demanding disruption of the search functions, since it's clearly their turf to look things up for people. And God help us if they start putting critical works onto these things; I've seen this exact argument before, and damned if I'm not gonna plagiarise it:
“We are quite definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and Other Thinking Persons, and we want this machine off, and we want it off now!”
“What’s the problem?” said Lunkwill.
“I’ll tell you what the problem is mate,” said Majikthise, “demarcation, that’s the problem!”
“We demand,” yelled Vroomfondel, “that demarcation may or may not be the problem!”
“You just let the machines get on with the adding up,” warned Majikthise, “and we’ll take care of the eternal verities thank you very much. You want to check your legal position you do mate. Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we’re straight out of a job aren’t we? I mean what’s the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?”
So what if Kindle can't do that. It's a slippery slope, is what it is, and that's what these obstructionists are gonna obstruct with. Just like last year's idiotic writer's strike, which killed one of my favorite shows and crippled another one, all over digital rights which so far have amounted to exactly three quarters of a bean, much less a hill. Or like the short-sighted terrorism depicted by Sigourney Weaver going all Gatekeeper on Mos Def and Jack Black in Be Kind Rewind by destroying the creative "sweded" knockoffs of their Veddy Propahly Copyrighted Material. Or the inanity of Prince attacking a Dancing Baby because the mommy was playing "Let's Go Crazy" in the background.
Why can't we all get along? ::waits for Rodney King to sue me for using that::
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-01 11:05 pm (UTC)To be fair, Wil Wheaton is a member of alt.wesley.die.die.die now, or so I judge from his Behind The Scenes memory snippet!
2)the librarians will be demanding disruption of the search functions, since it's clearly their turf to look things up for people
I don't wanna speak for anyone else here, but as a qualified Library, I kinda see the role as teaching people how to look things up for themselves and understand things like bias in the source material. But I can tell you're making a point, so perhaps I should shut up...
:grin:
Edited to add: apologies for the utter FAIL at HTML
no subject
Date: 2009-03-02 10:45 am (UTC)Ah, the lawsuit...America's pastime.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-02 02:53 pm (UTC)And you talk about lawsuits like they're a bad thing:P