After protest, Amazon restricts Kindle 2 text-to-speech feature

Hope you didn't buy a Kindle 2 after seeing the text-to-speech feature as its killer app: This weekend Amazon announced that it would be updating the way it works, giving publishers the right to turn off the feature on specific titles as they see fit.

Authors Guild president Roy Blount Jr. initially cried foul over the feature, claiming it was a violation of audiobook copyrights and had to be treated separately (and with an additional payment, of course) under the law. More importantly, Blount noted that computerized speech was improving dramatically and that it would inevitably make human-read books obsolete.

Amazon, while maintaining the text-to-speech feature is legal, said that "many rights holders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver’s seat." Publishers will now be able to "decide on a title by title basis" whether to turn the text to speech feature on or off. There's no telling how many will take the company up on the offer, but I expect it will be substantial.

While Blount is probably sleeping better, consumer rights advocates are considerably dismayed. The always-astute Lawrence Lessig offers an important history lesson on the subject, noting that in 2001, the very same issue arose over Adobe and its new e-reader -- which got downright silly when a copy of the public-domain, non-copyrightable Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was marked by its publisher is "cannot be read aloud." Is it a matter of time before this happens again?

It's a little surprising that Amazon -- the company that's taking on the state of New York in court over sales tax issues -- backed down so readily over the issue of text-to-speech on the Kindle. Two things are at play, I think: One, Amazon is really trying to push the Kindle and e-books in general right now, and will do anything to avoid controversy here. And two, Amazon actually benefits from this separation of rights: If you have to pay twice for a printed copy of your e-book and a version that can be read aloud, well, that's double the sales commission that Amazon collects.