The Reading Rights Coalition want their Kindle 2 Read To Me ability back and are going after the Author’s Guild with a vengeance.
There was an actual physical march in New York today. Here are some photos from Flickr and people tweeting about it.
(BTW, if twitter worked out a system for authority and displayed results from authority sources alongside latest tweets from everyone, they’d have a somewhat compelling search engine).
You can support the stand the RRC is taking by signing their online petition.
Amazon got the best possible outcome
- If Amazon had kept Read To Me, they’d be fighting a court case against the Author’s Guild.
- If Amazon had turned off Read To Me, the Reading Rights Coalition would be protesting at Amazon’s offices in Seattle, asking people to boycott Amazon.com, and in general creating a PR nightmare.
By leaving the option in the hands of the Authors and Publishers they are making the Author’s Guild responsible, who in turn are completely messing it up.
Author’s Guild is making things worse for themselves
Denying disabled people a feature that lets them actually access books is bad enough. The Author’s Guild are showing a lack of compassion and are really making things bad for themselves -
- They came up with a hare-brained idea where disabled people could ‘prove’ their disability and then use the Read To Me feature.
- They’re issuing careless statements -
The guild issued a statement to the Associated Press, saying that the protest was “unfortunate and unnecessary.”
An interesting take is from Robert Martinengo on his Accessible Publishing blog where he puts forth the argument that the RRC should work with the Author’s Guild.
Why do People get so mad about DRM and other measures to protect copyright?
My guess is that strongly enforced DRM and copyright protection measures is not only restrictive it also labels customers as potential thieves and considers them guilty even in the absence of evidence of any sort.
DRM is basically inconveniencing every single customer just to prevent abuse by the 5% of customers that are ‘bad customers’. In some cases (like the current Read To Me case) protecting rights aggressively gets perceived, perhaps justifiably so, as excessive greed.
Closing Thoughts
By leaving the issue in the court of public opinion Amazon are creating the highest probability chance that the Read To Me feature survives and thrives.
Amazon fighting the case themselves would have taken up years (look at what happened with Google and Google Books – it’s still going on). Worse, there was a chance that Amazon would’ve lost and set a precedent that would have closed off Read To Me AND every other similar feature in the future.
Kudos to Amazon for taking a great route with the Kindle 2′s Read To Me feature. It was the best route to ensure the feature survives.
Filed under: kindle 2 Tagged: | kindle 2 read to me, kindle for the blind
looks like the author’s guild is about to get an education in “biting the hand that feeds”… of course, they COULD have learned from other’s mistakes instead, and asked the RIAA how well it worked out for them…
but no, it seems like the free market has to lay the smack down on every single market segment before they get a clue.
Thanks for linking to my post even though you clearly didn’t understand it. Try reading it again.
you’re welcome.
[...] following is an excerpt from Amazon making Read To Me optional was a great move about the recent concession by Amazon to publishers to limit the great “Read To Me” [...]
Update on the Robert Martinengo comment –
After following up I understand Robert’s point better.
Here’s his reply to why he thinks the Author’s Guild actions are understandable, even though he isnèt in favor of them. And his point makes sense.
*** Robert:
Thanks for asking. First, I didn’t say I was in favor of the Guild’s
measures, just that I understood why those measures made sense to the
Guild, who, after all, does have other concerns besides disabled
readers. If you look at what happened – Amazon activates speech, the
Guild complains, Amazon returns control of speech to the rights holder
- the Guild’s claim must have had some weight with Amazon or they
would not have changed their position. Again, doesn’t mean you have to
agree with the Guild, but they did get results.
Next, as to why this is not necessarily a bad thing for disabled
readers.The Guild clearly stated their support for speech being
activated for all titles for people with disabilities. That seems like
a reasonable compromise to start with. Rather than stage a protest,
which may not change anything, why not accept the Guild’s offer to
work in the direction they suggest? I’m sure it was more satisfying
and fun to wave signs and chant slogans, but its not always a crime to
compromise.
[...] и забугорные отклики:Например http://ireaderreview.com/2009/04/07/amazon-making-read-to-me-optional-was-a-great-move/________________________________Я думал, что категория "жлобы [...]