[Web4lib] Kindle vs. Accessibility

[Tim Spalding]

Okay, I know it is super-duper-uncool of me, but I'm going to come out
in favor of the kill-audio flag.

This came about because the Authors Guild went after Amazon for giving
the Kindle text-to-speech capability. As the director of the Authors
Guild put it, "They don't have the right to read a book out loud.
That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law." (See
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123419309890963869.html) Eventually
Amazon buckled and now publishers can disable audio.

Here's why this is the right thing:

People who aren't authors don't know what authors' contracts look
like. They assume that publishers "buy" the book and that's that. In
fact, by tradition authors' contracts are very carefully worded to
give the publisher *only the rights explicitly granted*. For example,
authors' contracts generally specify exactly what countries are
included, with the authors agent selling the book to different
publishers in different countries. They generally include very
specific language about what formats the book can—and often must—come
out in. The authors contract is a short leesh indeed.

The short leesh is, historically, a good thing for authors. Authors
aren't like musicians, for example, who don't own their masters. The
upshot of this short leesh has been that publishers have to explicitly
include ebook rights in their agreements, or they don't have any ebook
rights whatsoever. In the case of everything published before about
2000, no ebook rights were granted, so the publishers have had to go
back to the authors for ebook rights. My novelist wife has received a
slew of addenda to all her contracts and, well, little checks to go
along with them. This is only fair. If they wanted rights to every
possible media that might be created in the future, they would have
had to pay her for it up front.

Now, I think digitization changes things. From now on authors should
be signing contracts that envision the book going everywhere it can
go, physically and on different devices. The publishers should insist,
and for that authors should be paid what its worth. But previous
contracts are previous contracts. If my wife signed something about
her text appearing as text on electronic devices, it isn't up to
publishers or Amazon to expand that any more than its up to them to
start selling it in Britain or Portugal.

I support digitization, mashups, un-DRMed devices and on and on. If my
wife was asked whether to open up her books to Kindle audio for free,
I'd tell her to do it. It's probably good for her. But according to
copyright law, it's her choice, not others'.