Who Knew?“Quoting [Paul Aiken], “We’ve never taken a position other than that they’re allowed to read a book aloud to their kids. Private performances are unregulated by copyright law.” This helps point out the flaw in his argument. He’s taking the position that these e-book readers, which can do text-to-speech, actually create another file. This was clear in everything he said in the interview. This isn’t true. A performance of an e-book reader by just translating the characters into speech does not create another file which is saved or anything, so there’s no derivative work. It’s just a performance.
Now if the Kindle saved these text-to-speech performances as files that could be accessed later, THEN he would have a point. But from what I know, it doesn’t do that. So right now a Kindle translation would be a private performance.”
- A man known as freediverdude, providing the first satisfactory explanation I’ve heard of how the Author’s Guild/Amazon Kindle debate isn’t a legal gray area. Not an easy feat for an Engadget commenter.
