This was originally posted at ZDNet’s Between the Lines.
Roy Blount Jr., president of the Author’s Guild, argues that the Kindle 2′s ability to read text aloud like one of those automated customer service robots is a substitute for audio books. Blount also adds that Amazon should be paying audio rights for the Kindle 2′s text-to-audio feature.
In The New York Times, Blount writes:
The Kindle 2 is a portable, wireless, paperback-size device onto which people can download a virtual library of digitalized titles. Amazon sells these downloads, and where the books are under copyright, it pays royalties to the authors and publishers.
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