A History Lesson for the Freetards

March 4th, 2009, by The Angry Drunk

A few days ago my esteemed com­rade John Welch wrote up a very insight­ful post about the issues sur­round­ing the Amazon Kindle’s text to speech fea­tures and Author’s Guild response. I’m not going to revisit the specifics of the sit­u­a­tion. If you’re unaware of them go and read John’s post, but I did want to add some of my thoughts in the form of a his­tor­i­cal par­al­lel that seems to be get­ting missed in the dis­cus­sion so far.

Sit Right Back and You’ll Hear a Tale…

Harken back to a dis­tant time when dinosaurs roamed the earth, crappy synth-pop filled the air­waves, and the inter­net was merely a gleam in Al Gores eye. Yes my chil­dren, I’m talk­ing about the 1980s. It was dur­ing this quaint time that a new tech­nol­ogy was tear­ing a new ass­hole through the enter­tain­ment world. That tech­nol­ogy was home video, specif­i­cally the VHS player.

Prior to this world-changing advance, if you wanted to watch a movie or tele­vi­sion show you watched it where and when the stu­dio or net­work told you to. And we liked it dad gum­mit! But sud­denly, with the rapidly gain­ing accep­tance of the VHS player, the pos­si­bil­ity of a con­tent provider releas­ing a recorded ver­sion of a movie or tele­vi­sion show for later view­ing was real (although the net­works were later to the party and never really embraced dis­trib­ut­ing tele­vi­sion shows on VHS due to the space limitations).

Note though, I’m not not not talk­ing about the use of video­tape by con­sumers to record shows on their own. The con­tent providers hated this and it isn’t ger­mane to my point.

Before I con­tinue I want to take a brief digres­sion into the world of how con­tent pro­duc­ers (not dis­trib­u­tors) are com­pen­sated. Say I write a screen­play, I now own the copy­right to that work (regard­less of what the free­tards think of copy­right) and I and I alone get to deter­mine how that work is repro­duced and dis­trib­uted. Of course, that’s the ide­al­ist sit­u­a­tion. The truth is (and this was even more true pre-internet) if I want to get paid for my work I’m going to need to work with some sort of con­tent dis­trib­u­tor. In the case of this para­ble the dis­trib­u­tors are the movie stu­dios and tele­vi­sion net­works. So what I do is I sell “rights” to have my work used and reproduced.

The thing is, all this gets very com­pli­cated; so what I do is I join a union like the Writer’s Guild of America that nego­ti­ates stan­dard rights agree­ments between its mem­bers and the var­i­ous con­tent dis­trib­u­tors. So, based on the stan­dard agree­ment, when my screen­play become the next sum­mer block­buster I get x per­cent­age of the prof­its. When it makes money over­seas I get y per­cent­age. When it plays as ABC’s movie of the week I get z per­cent­age. And so forth, all the way down to the pit­tance I get when it plays at three o’clock in the morn­ing on some no-network local UHF station.

Then VHS came along, and dur­ing the next round of nego­ti­a­tions between the WGA and the stu­dios a rate was nego­ti­ated. And here is where it gets inter­est­ing. Faced with the first real tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion in the home enter­tain­ment mar­ket in decades, the stu­dios decided that they didn’t want to pay all that much for the video dis­tri­b­u­tion rights. To be sure they had some com­pelling argu­ments. “VHS costs a lot to pro­duce, we need to recoup those losses.” And, “This is exper­i­men­tal tech­nol­ogy, we’re not sure that it will take off.” Both rea­sons were true at the time, and the stu­dios promised that they would revisit the rate later and increase it if warranted.

Of course, they never, ever did.

So, time went on and in the 1990s a new tech­no­log­i­cal advance was poised to remake the home enter­tain­ment land­scape, DVD. With DVDs vast increase in stor­age space came sev­eral new pos­si­bil­i­ties. First, it finally became fea­si­ble to the tele­vi­sion stu­dios to jump on the band­wagon. It was much eas­ier to sell a sea­son of a show on 2 or 3 DVDs as opposed to upwards of a dozen VHS tapes. The sec­ond new pos­si­bil­ity that is impor­tant to this tale is “bonus mate­r­ial.” One of the ini­tial key sell­ing points of DVD over VHS to the con­sumer was the pres­ence of bonus mate­r­ial: direc­tor and cast com­men­tary, “mak­ing of” doc­u­men­taries, you name it.

In time the next round of WGA nego­ti­a­tions came around and a rate for DVD sales was nego­ti­ated. But the stu­dios, being what they are stiffed the con­tent pro­duc­ers again. “DVD costs a lot to pro­duce, we need to recoup those losses,” they said. And, “This is exper­i­men­tal tech­nol­ogy, we’re not sure that it will take off. We’ll revisit the rates once this becomes a proven tech­nol­ogy.” Hey, that sounds famil­iar. And about the bonus mate­ri­als? “Consider those mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als,” the stu­dios said, “pro­duc­ing them makes you money.” So, once again the con­tent dis­trib­u­tors used the fact that a tech­nol­ogy was “unproven” to stiff the peo­ple who actu­ally pro­duce the content.

To pro­vide a brief coda to this story before mov­ing on to how it applies to the Kindle. In 2007 the stu­dios tried a third time to play the “it’s unproven we don’t want to pay you for it, besides it pro­vides you expo­sure” card. This time in rela­tion to the grow­ing trend of pro­vid­ing online sup­ple­ments to tele­vi­sion shows and movies aka “webisodes.” Having finally been burned enough times the WGA went on strike and forced a good-faith negotiation.

eBook Text To Speech is the New VHS

Nah, it prob­a­bly isn’t, but the par­al­lel is there. What the vast inter­net retar­dotron is miss­ing, and sadly what authors like Neil Gaiman are miss­ing in this is it isn’t a case of the evil con­tent pub­lish­ers pre­vent­ing the down­trod­den con­sumer from exer­cis­ing their sup­posed “rights.” The dan­ger here isn’t that I will avoid pay­ing for a proper audio­book ren­di­tion of Coraline, it’s that I won’t even have that option. The dan­ger is that the pub­lisher, in their con­stant quest to save a buck won’t even buy the audio­book rights from Mr. Gaiman. Instead they will buy the ebook rights know­ing that the text to speech option is “good enough.”

The sad thing is, the Author’s Guild is in dan­ger of being taken just as badly as the WGA was. Instead of attack­ing Amazon over the tech­nol­ogy; they need to imme­di­ately, and force­fully begin action to nego­ti­ate new agree­ments that pre­vent the pub­lish­ers from slip­ping text to speech in the back­door. Don’t rely on the fact that the main­stream tech­nol­ogy is ass now. As the WGA para­ble shows us, tech­nol­ogy advances, but once rights are nego­ti­ated away they’re damned hard to get back.

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  • Matt

    I’d argue that the Author’s Guild doesn’t have any right to dic­tate whether or not TTS is avail­able. I don’t know the exact legal­ity of this, but when you buy a book you obtain cer­tain fair-use rights that the copy­right holder has no say in.  I would think pri­vate read­ing of a book in one’s home would be allowed regard­less of what the pub­lisher may want.  I fail to see how a Kindle read­ing a book is any dif­fer­ent than a father read­ing a book to his child.  Just because a tech­nol­ogy may some day inter­fere with a rev­enue stream doesn’t mean that the rev­enue stream should be protected.Now they could sim­ply refuse to allow Amazon to sell ebooks at all if the TTS fea­ture isn’t removed, but that’s a busi­ness issue, not copyright.I just fail to see how this is any dif­fer­ent than buy­ing a CD and con­vert­ing it to MP3 for your own per­sonal use.

    • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

      First, “fair use” isn’t a “right.” It’s an affir­ma­tive defense that allows a per­son to com­mit cer­tain acts that would be con­sid­ered copy­right vio­la­tions but are oth­er­wise deemed ben­e­fi­cial to soci­ety. Second, con­grat­u­la­tions on being the first per­son to absolutely and utterly miss the gods damned point of what I’m writ­ing about here. As I wrote, this is not about con­sumer it’s about the pos­si­bil­ity of the con­tent dis­trib­u­tors yet again mak­ing an end run around pro­vid­ing fair com­pen­sa­tion to the con­tent cre­ators by lever­ag­ing a not yet main­stream technology.

      By the by you can edu­cate your­self on what “free use” actu­ally is here.

    • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

      What hap­pens when, instead of secur­ing and pay­ing for “pub­lic per­for­mance” rights, I just jack a Kindle into a speaker sys­tem in a park and put 100 books on repeat? (note, whether you can do that NOW has no bear­ing. if Amazon thinks that let­ting a kin­dle read end­less books to you like an ipod is a mon­ey­maker, they’ll add it in, and fast.)Hey, it’s MINE, I BOUGHT IT! FUCK YOU GREEDY FUCKING ACTORS AND AUTHORS! STARVE BITCHES< AND MAKE ME A FUCKING MOVIE THAT I CAN PLAY ON A BIG SCREEN FOR THE WORLD AND FUCK YOU OUT OF YOUR MONEY EVEN MORE.Does ANYONE ever think past their own fuck­ing nose any­more? This is not about pre­vent­ing you from read­ing out loud, or pre­vent­ing blind peo­ple from enjoy­ing books, (the PRIMARY USE FOR TTS, by the way). It’s about mak­ing sure that guys like Neil and Wil and Stephen Fry don’t get fucked by TTS being good enough and free.holy shit, is this THAT hard to follow?

  • Matt

    I’d argue that the Author’s Guild doesn’t have any right to dic­tate whether or not TTS is avail­able. I don’t know the exact legal­ity of this, but when you buy a book you obtain cer­tain fair-use rights that the copy­right holder has no say in.  I would think pri­vate read­ing of a book in one’s home would be allowed regard­less of what the pub­lisher may want.  I fail to see how a Kindle read­ing a book is any dif­fer­ent than a father read­ing a book to his child.  Just because a tech­nol­ogy may some day inter­fere with a rev­enue stream doesn’t mean that the rev­enue stream should be protected.Now they could sim­ply refuse to allow Amazon to sell ebooks at all if the TTS fea­ture isn’t removed, but that’s a busi­ness issue, not copyright.I just fail to see how this is any dif­fer­ent than buy­ing a CD and con­vert­ing it to MP3 for your own per­sonal use.

    • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

      First, “fair use” isn’t a “right.” It’s an affir­ma­tive defense that allows a per­son to com­mit cer­tain acts that would be con­sid­ered copy­right vio­la­tions but are oth­er­wise deemed ben­e­fi­cial to soci­ety. Second, con­grat­u­la­tions on being the first per­son to absolutely and utterly miss the gods damned point of what I’m writ­ing about here. As I wrote, this is not about con­sumer it’s about the pos­si­bil­ity of the con­tent dis­trib­u­tors yet again mak­ing an end run around pro­vid­ing fair com­pen­sa­tion to the con­tent cre­ators by lever­ag­ing a not yet main­stream technology.

      By the by you can edu­cate your­self on what “free use” actu­ally is here.

    • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

      What hap­pens when, instead of secur­ing and pay­ing for “pub­lic per­for­mance” rights, I just jack a Kindle into a speaker sys­tem in a park and put 100 books on repeat? (note, whether you can do that NOW has no bear­ing. if Amazon thinks that let­ting a kin­dle read end­less books to you like an ipod is a mon­ey­maker, they’ll add it in, and fast.)Hey, it’s MINE, I BOUGHT IT! FUCK YOU GREEDY FUCKING ACTORS AND AUTHORS! STARVE BITCHES< AND MAKE ME A FUCKING MOVIE THAT I CAN PLAY ON A BIG SCREEN FOR THE WORLD AND FUCK YOU OUT OF YOUR MONEY EVEN MORE.Does ANYONE ever think past their own fuck­ing nose any­more? This is not about pre­vent­ing you from read­ing out loud, or pre­vent­ing blind peo­ple from enjoy­ing books, (the PRIMARY USE FOR TTS, by the way). It’s about mak­ing sure that guys like Neil and Wil and Stephen Fry don’t get fucked by TTS being good enough and free.holy shit, is this THAT hard to follow?

  • Matt

    First, argu­ing over the exact use of the word “right” is point­less, we obvi­ously dis­agree on how we’re using it.  I am not a lawyer and don’t even pre­tend to play one on the inter­net so I’m not try­ing to use a legal def­i­n­i­tion here.Second, my point, which I may not have made clear, is that there is no fair com­pen­sa­tion for TTS, at least not when it’s per­formed by a device the end user con­trols. The Kindle sit­u­a­tion is made a bit muddy by the fact that Amazon is both the reseller and the maker of the device. But imag­ine a that Apple is mak­ing the ebook reader and Amazon is pro­vid­ing the store. Apple’s ebook reader has a fea­ture that uses Apple’s TTS soft­ware to read the book to the end user. Can the author demand addi­tional money for this fea­ture?  I’d argue that they cannot.

  • Matt

    First, argu­ing over the exact use of the word “right” is point­less, we obvi­ously dis­agree on how we’re using it.  I am not a lawyer and don’t even pre­tend to play one on the inter­net so I’m not try­ing to use a legal def­i­n­i­tion here.Second, my point, which I may not have made clear, is that there is no fair com­pen­sa­tion for TTS, at least not when it’s per­formed by a device the end user con­trols. The Kindle sit­u­a­tion is made a bit muddy by the fact that Amazon is both the reseller and the maker of the device. But imag­ine a that Apple is mak­ing the ebook reader and Amazon is pro­vid­ing the store. Apple’s ebook reader has a fea­ture that uses Apple’s TTS soft­ware to read the book to the end user. Can the author demand addi­tional money for this fea­ture?  I’d argue that they cannot.

  • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

    Private or Public use? The two are very different. 

  • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

    Private or Public use? The two are very different. 

  • Matt

    John,In your sce­nario, I’d say that’s clearly a pub­lic per­for­mance, for the same rea­son that read­ing a book over a PA sys­tem in a park is a pub­lic per­for­mance.  I’m argu­ing that the Kindle is essen­tially tak­ing the role of some­one read­ing the book, and should be treated exactly the same.  If I can read a book to my fam­ily, so can my Kindle.  If I can’t read a book in a cof­fee shop, nei­ther can my Kindle.And just because Neil makes money off of audio books now, doesn’t mean that he will for ever.  Technology changes, and with it so do busi­ness mod­els, it’s a fact of life.

  • Matt

    John,In your sce­nario, I’d say that’s clearly a pub­lic per­for­mance, for the same rea­son that read­ing a book over a PA sys­tem in a park is a pub­lic per­for­mance.  I’m argu­ing that the Kindle is essen­tially tak­ing the role of some­one read­ing the book, and should be treated exactly the same.  If I can read a book to my fam­ily, so can my Kindle.  If I can’t read a book in a cof­fee shop, nei­ther can my Kindle.And just because Neil makes money off of audio books now, doesn’t mean that he will for ever.  Technology changes, and with it so do busi­ness mod­els, it’s a fact of life.

  • Matt

    Just to be clear, let’s say TTS does get to the point some day where it’s as good as a tal­ented voice actor mak­ing an audio book.  If some pub­lish­ing com­pany, or even Amazon, had secured the rights to pub­lish an ebook, but then ran that ebook through TTS and started sell­ing it, or just putting the MP3s on their web­site, that is 100% copy­right infringemnt.  I’m only talk­ing about pri­vate use, which is what I believe the Kindle was intended for.

    • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

      Matt, what I’m con­cerned about is TTS tech get­ting to the point where it is “good enough” and the pub­lish­ers using that as an excuse to stop buy­ing audio­book rights from the writ­ers at all.

      This is very anal­o­gous to some­thing that has already hap­pened, and recently at that. One of the major issues lead­ing to the 2008 WGA strike was stu­dios requir­ing that writ­ers for shows like Battlestar Gallactica pro­duce webisodes and claim­ing that they weren’t required to pay the writ­ers for them because they were “mar­ket­ing mate­r­ial” and not actual content.

      • Matt Stocum

        And I’d say that where the TTS is being used is the pri­mary issue.  In the home for pri­vate use should be okay regard­less of what the pub­lisher or the author says.  Creating an audio book or pub­lish­ing an audio ver­sion on the web, that’s an entirely dif­fer­ent issue, and that’s where they should be focus­ing their efforts.  Someday TTS prob­a­bly will get to the point where it is good enough and kill the audio book mar­ket.  That’s unfor­tu­nate, but it’s the way things go.  Movies bit into the the­ater mar­ket.  Records bit into the mar­ket for live per­form­ers of music.  Technology cre­ates and destroys markets.

  • Matt

    Just to be clear, let’s say TTS does get to the point some day where it’s as good as a tal­ented voice actor mak­ing an audio book.  If some pub­lish­ing com­pany, or even Amazon, had secured the rights to pub­lish an ebook, but then ran that ebook through TTS and started sell­ing it, or just putting the MP3s on their web­site, that is 100% copy­right infringemnt.  I’m only talk­ing about pri­vate use, which is what I believe the Kindle was intended for.

    • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

      Matt, what I’m con­cerned about is TTS tech get­ting to the point where it is “good enough” and the pub­lish­ers using that as an excuse to stop buy­ing audio­book rights from the writ­ers at all.

      This is very anal­o­gous to some­thing that has already hap­pened, and recently at that. One of the major issues lead­ing to the 2008 WGA strike was stu­dios requir­ing that writ­ers for shows like Battlestar Gallactica pro­duce webisodes and claim­ing that they weren’t required to pay the writ­ers for them because they were “mar­ket­ing mate­r­ial” and not actual content.

      • Matt Stocum

        And I’d say that where the TTS is being used is the pri­mary issue.  In the home for pri­vate use should be okay regard­less of what the pub­lisher or the author says.  Creating an audio book or pub­lish­ing an audio ver­sion on the web, that’s an entirely dif­fer­ent issue, and that’s where they should be focus­ing their efforts.  Someday TTS prob­a­bly will get to the point where it is good enough and kill the audio book mar­ket.  That’s unfor­tu­nate, but it’s the way things go.  Movies bit into the the­ater mar­ket.  Records bit into the mar­ket for live per­form­ers of music.  Technology cre­ates and destroys markets.

  • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

    Matt, you’re assum­ing a lot, mainly that pub­lish­ing con­glom­er­ates won’t use TTS improve­ments to fuck con­tent cre­ators over. What the Kindle is intended for is imma­te­r­ial. I don’t trust a billion-dollar con­glom­er­ate far­ther than I can throw it.You’re also trust­ing a rapa­cious indus­try to not charge extra for pub­lic per­for­mance rights, and tell the cre­ator “Hey fuck off dick­head, it’s TTS, you don’t get shit“If you really think that won’t hap­pen, you should really read up on the his­tory of how billion-dollar multi­na­tion­als get that way.

  • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

    Matt, you’re assum­ing a lot, mainly that pub­lish­ing con­glom­er­ates won’t use TTS improve­ments to fuck con­tent cre­ators over. What the Kindle is intended for is imma­te­r­ial. I don’t trust a billion-dollar con­glom­er­ate far­ther than I can throw it.You’re also trust­ing a rapa­cious indus­try to not charge extra for pub­lic per­for­mance rights, and tell the cre­ator “Hey fuck off dick­head, it’s TTS, you don’t get shit“If you really think that won’t hap­pen, you should really read up on the his­tory of how billion-dollar multi­na­tion­als get that way.

  • Matt

    I’d say it mat­ters how the TTS is being used.  I don’t care how good TTS gets, if it’s done for pri­vate use I don’t think any­one gets an extra dime.  The eas­i­est way to look at it in my mind is to just imag­ine the Kindle is an actual per­son, and treat the sit­u­a­tion that way.  If this means some rev­enue streams dry up, it’s unfor­tu­nate, but that’s life.  Technology replaces people’s jobs all the time.

  • Matt

    I’d say it mat­ters how the TTS is being used.  I don’t care how good TTS gets, if it’s done for pri­vate use I don’t think any­one gets an extra dime.  The eas­i­est way to look at it in my mind is to just imag­ine the Kindle is an actual per­son, and treat the sit­u­a­tion that way.  If this means some rev­enue streams dry up, it’s unfor­tu­nate, but that’s life.  Technology replaces people’s jobs all the time.

  • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

    It won’t kill anyone’s rev­enue stream at the pub­lish­ing com­pany level. They’ll make MORE money.The peo­ple who will get fucked are the ones cre­at­ing the content.Why are you so fine with pay­ing pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies but not the peo­ple cre­at­ing the actual content?

  • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

    It won’t kill anyone’s rev­enue stream at the pub­lish­ing com­pany level. They’ll make MORE money.The peo­ple who will get fucked are the ones cre­at­ing the content.Why are you so fine with pay­ing pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies but not the peo­ple cre­at­ing the actual content?

  • Matt Stocum

    John, can you explain a sce­nario in which the Kindle will gen­er­ate more money for the pub­lish­ing com­pany, but less for the author, treat­ing any per­for­mance by the Kindle exactly the same as you would treat it by a per­son?  There prob­a­bly is a def­i­nite argu­ment to be made that the Author’s Guild needs to ensure that the way their con­tracts are writ­ten that pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies can’t use TTS and sell the out­put as a pack­aged prod­uct, but that seems like a com­pletely dif­fer­ent issue than the Kindle TTS which is what they were mak­ing noise about.

  • Matt Stocum

    John, can you explain a sce­nario in which the Kindle will gen­er­ate more money for the pub­lish­ing com­pany, but less for the author, treat­ing any per­for­mance by the Kindle exactly the same as you would treat it by a per­son?  There prob­a­bly is a def­i­nite argu­ment to be made that the Author’s Guild needs to ensure that the way their con­tracts are writ­ten that pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies can’t use TTS and sell the out­put as a pack­aged prod­uct, but that seems like a com­pletely dif­fer­ent issue than the Kindle TTS which is what they were mak­ing noise about.

  • Andrew

    I’m in agree­ment with Matt on this issue.  Arguing against the pro­gres­sion of tech­nol­ogy to sus­tain an exist­ing busi­ness model makes no sense to me.  

    • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

      No one’s argu­ing against the tech­nol­ogy, but we are say­ing, let’s make sure that we don’t repeat the VHS/DVD/Webisode drama and have to have strikes, and law­suits and shit, by set­tling this NOW instead of 5-ten years after the fact. Or is attempt­ing to not let shit degen­er­ate ala RIAA/MPAA now an attempt to “restrict” technology.

      • Matt Stocum

        Restricting tech­nol­ogy is what the Author’s Guild seemed to be going after.  Their argu­ment was that Kindle’s text-to-speech fea­ture was copy­right infringe­ment.  I’d say that only holds if it was being used for a pub­lic per­for­mance.  But that would be the same if some­one was doing a read­ing from a book in public.

  • Andrew

    I’m in agree­ment with Matt on this issue.  Arguing against the pro­gres­sion of tech­nol­ogy to sus­tain an exist­ing busi­ness model makes no sense to me.  

    • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

      No one’s argu­ing against the tech­nol­ogy, but we are say­ing, let’s make sure that we don’t repeat the VHS/DVD/Webisode drama and have to have strikes, and law­suits and shit, by set­tling this NOW instead of 5-ten years after the fact. Or is attempt­ing to not let shit degen­er­ate ala RIAA/MPAA now an attempt to “restrict” technology.

      • Matt Stocum

        Restricting tech­nol­ogy is what the Author’s Guild seemed to be going after.  Their argu­ment was that Kindle’s text-to-speech fea­ture was copy­right infringe­ment.  I’d say that only holds if it was being used for a pub­lic per­for­mance.  But that would be the same if some­one was doing a read­ing from a book in public.

  • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

    Sure.“enhanced TTS“You use invis­i­ble codes in the file to hint to the TTS sys­tem about things like pac­ing, stress, accents, vol­ume etc. You get a much bet­ter ver­sion of the same file, and you tack on a $2 pre­mium. Hell, it canbe the same file, just an enabling code that you pay for . ooh, choice.That’s com­pletely inde­pen­dent of the kin­dle, although, if you have any brains, you license the tech to Amazon for say, a dime a unit on the kindle.Now you get paid for every kin­dle sold AND paid again for every enhanced TTS sale. At a buck or two, it’s an impulse buy. It’s an elec­tronic snick­ers bar.What does the author get? Fuck.all.

  • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

    Sure.“enhanced TTS“You use invis­i­ble codes in the file to hint to the TTS sys­tem about things like pac­ing, stress, accents, vol­ume etc. You get a much bet­ter ver­sion of the same file, and you tack on a $2 pre­mium. Hell, it canbe the same file, just an enabling code that you pay for . ooh, choice.That’s com­pletely inde­pen­dent of the kin­dle, although, if you have any brains, you license the tech to Amazon for say, a dime a unit on the kindle.Now you get paid for every kin­dle sold AND paid again for every enhanced TTS sale. At a buck or two, it’s an impulse buy. It’s an elec­tronic snick­ers bar.What does the author get? Fuck.all.

  • Matt Stocum

    John, in that case I see your point.  But this is an issue that the author’s guild needs to be tak­ing up with pub­lish­ers, not try­ing to argue that the Kindle TTS fea­ture is copy­right infringe­ment, which after re-reading, I think was the point of the orig­i­nal post.  Making noise at Amazon isn’t the best way to approach the issue in my opin­ion.  And, they need to be aware that at some point, TTS is prob­a­bly going to destroy the audio book mar­ket.  TTS isn’t any­where close yet, but some­day it will prob­a­bly get to the point where it can’t be dis­tin­guished from a good voice actor.  Voice actors are prob­a­bly going to be hurt­ing even worse when that day comes.

    • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

      Matt,  I agree that the Author’s Guild approached this in absolutely the wrong way, and in the process shot them­selves in the foot. Now, by the infi­nite per­ver­sity of baby-eating Moloch, we have the very same peo­ple who want to take pitch­forks and torches to the music labels and stu­dios ris­ing up to defend their equiv­a­lent in the pub­lish­ing world. 

      • Matt Stocum

        I don’t think peo­ple are try­ing to defend the pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies.  I think they’re try­ing to defend their abil­ity to use TTS in their homes.  They are very dif­fer­ent issues.  They’re defend­ing it along the same lines that they defend their abil­ity to take a CD they bought, and con­vert it to MP3 to play on their iPod.

  • Matt Stocum

    John, in that case I see your point.  But this is an issue that the author’s guild needs to be tak­ing up with pub­lish­ers, not try­ing to argue that the Kindle TTS fea­ture is copy­right infringe­ment, which after re-reading, I think was the point of the orig­i­nal post.  Making noise at Amazon isn’t the best way to approach the issue in my opin­ion.  And, they need to be aware that at some point, TTS is prob­a­bly going to destroy the audio book mar­ket.  TTS isn’t any­where close yet, but some­day it will prob­a­bly get to the point where it can’t be dis­tin­guished from a good voice actor.  Voice actors are prob­a­bly going to be hurt­ing even worse when that day comes.

    • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

      Matt,

        I agree that the Author’s Guild approached this in absolutely the wrong way, and in the process shot them­selves in the foot. Now, by the infi­nite per­ver­sity of baby-eating Moloch, we have the very same peo­ple who want to take pitch­forks and torches to the music labels and stu­dios ris­ing up to defend their equiv­a­lent in the pub­lish­ing world. 
      • Matt Stocum

        I don’t think peo­ple are try­ing to defend the pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies.  I think they’re try­ing to defend their abil­ity to use TTS in their homes.  They are very dif­fer­ent issues.  They’re defend­ing it along the same lines that they defend their abil­ity to take a CD they bought, and con­vert it to MP3 to play on their iPod.

  • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

    Who ELSE would they talk to about mak­ing sure that the Kindle TTS doesn’t screw them over? Amazon is the BEST place to start, because they con­trol the kindle.Oh, and if you think TTS isn’t any­where CLOSE to good enough, (and that is what sells more than “fan­tas­tic), you need to poke into TTS research. It’s bet­ter than you think. Not every book needs Stephen fry

    • Matt Stocum

      And I don’t think Amazon should have to dis­able a fea­ture on a prod­uct because it may inter­fere with someone’s income.  Not to be harsh about it, but that’s not Amazon’s prob­lem, it’s Stephen’s and Neil’s.  Now if you agree with the Author’s Guild in that this is a copy­right issue, well that’s some­thing that will need to be tested in the courts.  Kindle TTS is a fea­ture intended for use in a pri­vate set­ting.  Can some­one abuse that?  Absolutely, and peo­ple prob­a­bly will.  Amazon’s posi­tion seems very sim­i­lar to Sony’s in the Betamax case.  They are sell­ing a prod­uct that has a sig­nif­i­cant legal use.  Now if authors nego­ti­ate con­tracts with pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies that say that they can’t cre­ate an enhanced TTS ver­sion of the book, or that they can’t pub­lish an audio book cre­ated via TTS, then that’s between them.  Hell, they can even take steps to make it dif­fi­cult for a device like Kindle to read the ebook.  But whether the Kindle has a TTS fea­ture or not is a com­pletely dif­fer­ent issue.

  • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

    Who ELSE would they talk to about mak­ing sure that the Kindle TTS doesn’t screw them over? Amazon is the BEST place to start, because they con­trol the kindle.Oh, and if you think TTS isn’t any­where CLOSE to good enough, (and that is what sells more than “fan­tas­tic), you need to poke into TTS research. It’s bet­ter than you think. Not every book needs Stephen fry

    • Matt Stocum

      And I don’t think Amazon should have to dis­able a fea­ture on a prod­uct because it may inter­fere with someone’s income.  Not to be harsh about it, but that’s not Amazon’s prob­lem, it’s Stephen’s and Neil’s.  Now if you agree with the Author’s Guild in that this is a copy­right issue, well that’s some­thing that will need to be tested in the courts.  Kindle TTS is a fea­ture intended for use in a pri­vate set­ting.  Can some­one abuse that?  Absolutely, and peo­ple prob­a­bly will.  Amazon’s posi­tion seems very sim­i­lar to Sony’s in the Betamax case.  They are sell­ing a prod­uct that has a sig­nif­i­cant legal use.  Now if authors nego­ti­ate con­tracts with pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies that say that they can’t cre­ate an enhanced TTS ver­sion of the book, or that they can’t pub­lish an audio book cre­ated via TTS, then that’s between them.  Hell, they can even take steps to make it dif­fi­cult for a device like Kindle to read the ebook.  But whether the Kindle has a TTS fea­ture or not is a com­pletely dif­fer­ent issue.

  • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

    Fuck it I give up. I can see why y’all are so damned worked up over text to speech; appar­ently you’re unable to actu­ally read words on a screen before slap­ping your paws onto the key­board to pound out a response.

    • Matt Stocum

      I guess I’m still not entirely sure what your point was.  I just don’t see TTS being in the hands of the pub­lish­ers.  It’s in the hands of the con­sumer elec­tron­ics pro­duc­ers.  The only way I see it being in the pub­lish­ers hands is if they man­age to con­vince CE pro­duc­ers to only enable it on books that they bless, and the writ­ers don’t get con­trol in their con­tracts.  And from my point of view, that’s exactly what just hap­pened with the Kindle.

  • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

    Fuck it I give up. I can see why y’all are so damned worked up over text to speech; appar­ently you’re unable to actu­ally read words on a screen before slap­ping your paws onto the key­board to pound out a response.

    • Matt Stocum

      I guess I’m still not entirely sure what your point was.  I just don’t see TTS being in the hands of the pub­lish­ers.  It’s in the hands of the con­sumer elec­tron­ics pro­duc­ers.  The only way I see it being in the pub­lish­ers hands is if they man­age to con­vince CE pro­duc­ers to only enable it on books that they bless, and the writ­ers don’t get con­trol in their con­tracts.  And from my point of view, that’s exactly what just hap­pened with the Kindle.

  • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

    Who releases books for Amazon to distribute?Publishers. occa­sion­ally authors, but pub­lish­ers con­trol 99% of what you see on Amazon. Who do you think Amazon nego­ti­ates with, the author?BAAAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHAHAAHAHoh, and on the “records reduced live performance”…um. Try again. Records drive tours, because they give you a rea­son to see the band live​.As well, the ram­pant ass-fucking that bands get from records/CDs DRIVES them to tour heav­ily, because when they tour, they make a FUCK TON more money than they do from CD sales.Keep in mind that under most dis­tri­b­u­tion contracts..You pay for your own advance.You pay mar­ket­ing costs.You pay pretty much ALL the costs asso­ci­ated with your record and the major­ity of the costs asso­ci­ated with your book. The level of ass-raping of cre­atives by the pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies beg­gars your imag­i­na­tion to the point that when I have SHOWN PEOPLE THE NUMBERS, they STILL can barely believe it.and yet you won­der why the AUthor’s Guild is sus­pi­cious about this?Shit.and Angry…dude, if RIAA had been as smart about PR as Amazon and the pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies, peo­ple would be BEGGING for DRM on MP3s. Face it, peo­ple are stu­pid and don’t care about fuck-all beyond their own noses.If it involved a free ebook and the new U2 album cheap, you could get most peo­ple to lick a run­ning woodchipper.

    • Matt Stocum

      So John, who has the right to tell me if I can use TTS in my own home?  Who has the right to tell CE man­u­fac­tur­ers what fea­tures they can include in their prod­ucts?  The pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies are dicks, I get it, I’m not argu­ing with you on that point.  I’m argu­ing that tech­nol­ogy changes, and just because some­thing will make you money today, doesn’t mean it will tomor­row.  Without tools like ARD com­pa­nies would need to hire more techs to get the job done, does that mean Apple shouldn’t have released ARD because it elim­i­nated jobs?

  • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

    Who releases books for Amazon to distribute?Publishers. occa­sion­ally authors, but pub­lish­ers con­trol 99% of what you see on Amazon. Who do you think Amazon nego­ti­ates with, the author?BAAAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHAHAAHAHoh, and on the “records reduced live performance”…um. Try again. Records drive tours, because they give you a rea­son to see the band live​.As well, the ram­pant ass-fucking that bands get from records/CDs DRIVES them to tour heav­ily, because when they tour, they make a FUCK TON more money than they do from CD sales.Keep in mind that under most dis­tri­b­u­tion contracts..You pay for your own advance.You pay mar­ket­ing costs.You pay pretty much ALL the costs asso­ci­ated with your record and the major­ity of the costs asso­ci­ated with your book. The level of ass-raping of cre­atives by the pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies beg­gars your imag­i­na­tion to the point that when I have SHOWN PEOPLE THE NUMBERS, they STILL can barely believe it.and yet you won­der why the AUthor’s Guild is sus­pi­cious about this?Shit.and Angry…dude, if RIAA had been as smart about PR as Amazon and the pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies, peo­ple would be BEGGING for DRM on MP3s. Face it, peo­ple are stu­pid and don’t care about fuck-all beyond their own noses.If it involved a free ebook and the new U2 album cheap, you could get most peo­ple to lick a run­ning woodchipper.

    • Matt Stocum

      So John, who has the right to tell me if I can use TTS in my own home?  Who has the right to tell CE man­u­fac­tur­ers what fea­tures they can include in their prod­ucts?  The pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies are dicks, I get it, I’m not argu­ing with you on that point.  I’m argu­ing that tech­nol­ogy changes, and just because some­thing will make you money today, doesn’t mean it will tomor­row.  Without tools like ARD com­pa­nies would need to hire more techs to get the job done, does that mean Apple shouldn’t have released ARD because it elim­i­nated jobs?

  • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

    Apple Remote Desktop is a total straw­man here, as is your ICANDOWHATIWANTINMYHOME. This isn’t about home use.This is about mak­ing sure that Publishing com­pa­nies can’t kill the audio­book indus­try, or bou­tique it, so that they can stop pay­ing authors for audio ver­sions of books. Right now, paper and ebooks are sep­a­rate, so going cheap on ebooks is easy. What hap­pens when paper even­tu­ally becomes bou­tique, and the author has to make ALL their money from ebooks? Well, they done went cheap for years, no one’s going to pay more for that. But hey, you made money yes­ter­day, why the fuck should you make money today? Eat on your own time, I want content.Right now, Audiobooks are labor inten­sive. What hap­pens when that goes away? What hap­pens when that income stream dies. I’ll tell you what happens…that ebook con­tract is going to get rene­go­ti­ated, and HARD, and the authors are not going to be any­thing CLOSE to rea­son­able, because 2/3rds of their income is GONE. Enjoy cheap ebooks while it lasts, that shit won’t last long.Oh wait, they shouldn’t expect to make money for their work tomor­row, because they already made money yesterday.You going to enjoy peo­ple jack­ing their prices for pro­vid­ing con­tent through the fuck­ing roof, because large-scale repro­duc­tion for every sale will be con­sid­ered a sacred right? “FUck you and your per­for­mance riights, I can do what I want“But hey, just because I was able to pay my rent last month doesn’t mean I should pay my rent next month if it puts you out in the least, right?Here’s one, go ply that line to Harlan Ellison, and see what happens.Pay the fuck­ing writer, or write it yourself.

  • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

    Apple Remote Desktop is a total straw­man here, as is your ICANDOWHATIWANTINMYHOME. This isn’t about home use.This is about mak­ing sure that Publishing com­pa­nies can’t kill the audio­book indus­try, or bou­tique it, so that they can stop pay­ing authors for audio ver­sions of books. Right now, paper and ebooks are sep­a­rate, so going cheap on ebooks is easy. What hap­pens when paper even­tu­ally becomes bou­tique, and the author has to make ALL their money from ebooks? Well, they done went cheap for years, no one’s going to pay more for that. But hey, you made money yes­ter­day, why the fuck should you make money today? Eat on your own time, I want content.Right now, Audiobooks are labor inten­sive. What hap­pens when that goes away? What hap­pens when that income stream dies. I’ll tell you what happens…that ebook con­tract is going to get rene­go­ti­ated, and HARD, and the authors are not going to be any­thing CLOSE to rea­son­able, because 2/3rds of their income is GONE. Enjoy cheap ebooks while it lasts, that shit won’t last long.Oh wait, they shouldn’t expect to make money for their work tomor­row, because they already made money yesterday.You going to enjoy peo­ple jack­ing their prices for pro­vid­ing con­tent through the fuck­ing roof, because large-scale repro­duc­tion for every sale will be con­sid­ered a sacred right? “FUck you and your per­for­mance riights, I can do what I want“But hey, just because I was able to pay my rent last month doesn’t mean I should pay my rent next month if it puts you out in the least, right?Here’s one, go ply that line to Harlan Ellison, and see what happens.Pay the fuck­ing writer, or write it yourself.

  • Alex

    Look, a sale is a sale.  Whether it’s a ebook, a phys­i­cal book, or an audio­book.  If the Authors Guild believe a sin­gle per­son is pur­chas­ing an ebook and an audio­book of the same damn book then they’re a bunch of Fucktards.  If they believe that the sale of the ebook with TTS is pre­clud­ing them from earn­ing addi­tional income on the sale of the audio­book then they’re a bunch of Fucktards.  If you’re so wor­ried about loss of income, then rene­go­ti­ate your pub­lish­ing con­tracts and stop argu­ing about tech­nol­ogy.  How did authors earn income before audio­books?  They were sell­ing books.  Here’s an idea.… sell a fuck­ing book and get over it.

  • Alex

    Look, a sale is a sale.  Whether it’s a ebook, a phys­i­cal book, or an audio­book.  If the Authors Guild believe a sin­gle per­son is pur­chas­ing an ebook and an audio­book of the same damn book then they’re a bunch of Fucktards.  If they believe that the sale of the ebook with TTS is pre­clud­ing them from earn­ing addi­tional income on the sale of the audio­book then they’re a bunch of Fucktards.  If you’re so wor­ried about loss of income, then rene­go­ti­ate your pub­lish­ing con­tracts and stop argu­ing about tech­nol­ogy.  How did authors earn income before audio­books?  They were sell­ing books.  Here’s an idea.… sell a fuck­ing book and get over it.

  • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

    That’s kind of what the Author’s guild is try­ing to start, albeit, for a change, BEFORE it gets out of hand. In any sit­u­a­tion like this, it’s always been the con­tent cre­ators that get fucked, not the pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies. They’re try­ing to pre­vent that for once, and I agree with angry, that peo­ple are ral­ly­ing to the sides of the same pub­lsh­ing com­pa­nies THAT ARE SUING PEOPLE AS PART OF RIAA is fuck­ing astounding.All of a sud­den, the same com­pa­nies that were scum three weeks ago are heros. Oh wait, because if they screw the con­tent cre­ators, you save money. Of course, never mind.

  • http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

    That’s kind of what the Author’s guild is try­ing to start, albeit, for a change, BEFORE it gets out of hand. In any sit­u­a­tion like this, it’s always been the con­tent cre­ators that get fucked, not the pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies. They’re try­ing to pre­vent that for once, and I agree with angry, that peo­ple are ral­ly­ing to the sides of the same pub­lsh­ing com­pa­nies THAT ARE SUING PEOPLE AS PART OF RIAA is fuck­ing astounding.All of a sud­den, the same com­pa­nies that were scum three weeks ago are heros. Oh wait, because if they screw the con­tent cre­ators, you save money. Of course, never mind.

  • mac­book amateur

    One point that I don’t think has been made is that Amazon makes the DRM for the Kindle. That means under the DMCA the ebook is not sim­ply text and can’t legally be made into sim­ple text with­out Amazon’s and the con­tent providers agree­ment. The Kindle DRM means that Amazon con­trols whether or not TTS is pos­si­ble. You and I can’t legally make TTS work on the Kindle files because we can’t legally break the DRM with­out vio­lat­ing the DMCA.What this means is that the Author’s Guild has an eas­ier argu­ment against Amazon because the DRM already pre­vents con­sumers from “doing what they want” with the ebooks they pur­chased. The con­sumer can’t do any­thing they want, they can only do what Amazon allows. I think that pretty much blows the “fair use” argu­ment out of the water. If I under­stand cor­rectly (which is prob­a­bly a long shot) Amazon doesn’t get fair use pro­tec­tion, just users who pur­chased the con­tent. Amazon, a for profit com­pany who makes money on the TTS fea­ture, has to enable the TTS fea­ture. If they aren’t allowed fair use pro­tec­tion then they’ll likely be sued for vio­lat­ing their agree­ments with the con­tent producers.I’d love to hear from an actual lawyer on whether or not the DRM in the Kindle actu­ally makes it more likely that Amazon will lose this battle.

    • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

      Oh good gods you men­tioned the DMCA…the wail­ing will never end now :) BTW, you’re on the right track regard­ing the rela­tion­ship between Amazon and the copy­right hold­ers. This isn’t an issue of con­sumer rights and the mean old con­tent cre­ators STEALING MAH FREEDOMS, it’s an issue of what rights has Amazon nego­ti­ated with the copy­right hold­ers, and is the acti­va­tion of TTS exceed­ing those rights. Of course, as John pointed out, most peo­ple can’t see past their own petty self­ish­ness to see that.

  • mac­book amateur

    One point that I don’t think has been made is that Amazon makes the DRM for the Kindle. That means under the DMCA the ebook is not sim­ply text and can’t legally be made into sim­ple text with­out Amazon’s and the con­tent providers agree­ment. The Kindle DRM means that Amazon con­trols whether or not TTS is pos­si­ble. You and I can’t legally make TTS work on the Kindle files because we can’t legally break the DRM with­out vio­lat­ing the DMCA.What this means is that the Author’s Guild has an eas­ier argu­ment against Amazon because the DRM already pre­vents con­sumers from “doing what they want” with the ebooks they pur­chased. The con­sumer can’t do any­thing they want, they can only do what Amazon allows. I think that pretty much blows the “fair use” argu­ment out of the water. If I under­stand cor­rectly (which is prob­a­bly a long shot) Amazon doesn’t get fair use pro­tec­tion, just users who pur­chased the con­tent. Amazon, a for profit com­pany who makes money on the TTS fea­ture, has to enable the TTS fea­ture. If they aren’t allowed fair use pro­tec­tion then they’ll likely be sued for vio­lat­ing their agree­ments with the con­tent producers.I’d love to hear from an actual lawyer on whether or not the DRM in the Kindle actu­ally makes it more likely that Amazon will lose this battle.

    • http://www.theangrydrunk.com The Angry Drunk

      Oh good gods you men­tioned the DMCA…the wail­ing will never end now :) BTW, you’re on the right track regard­ing the rela­tion­ship between Amazon and the copy­right hold­ers. This isn’t an issue of con­sumer rights and the mean old con­tent cre­ators STEALING MAH FREEDOMS, it’s an issue of what rights has Amazon nego­ti­ated with the copy­right hold­ers, and is the acti­va­tion of TTS exceed­ing those rights. Of course, as John pointed out, most peo­ple can’t see past their own petty self­ish­ness to see that.

  • http://fuzzyco.com/ Fuzzy Gerdes

    What I think keeps TTS from being a new VHS/DVD sit­u­a­tion for authors is the dif­fer­ent ways that peo­ple con­sume books and TV. How many peo­ple watch a show on TV and then also buy the series on DVD? Lots. Or just buy the DVD and watch the show in marathon ses­sions? Even more. How many peo­ple buy both the text ver­sion of a book (either paper or ebook) and the audio­book? Not many, I would wager. I don’t have any hard num­bers on it, of course, but for most peo­ple I know it’s an either/or. So unless authors are get­ting really fat bank for the audio rights to a book, it should all even out even in a world of per­fect TTS tech­nol­ogy — because some­one who in the present day would buy the audio­book ver­sion of a text would still have to buy the ebook to have their Kindle 8 read it to them. Right? What am I miss­ing about that?

    (Somehow I missed Alex’s com­ment the first time through — so, what he said.)

  • http://fuzzyco.com/ Fuzzy Gerdes

    What I think keeps TTS from being a new VHS/DVD sit­u­a­tion for authors is the dif­fer­ent ways that peo­ple con­sume books and TV. How many peo­ple watch a show on TV and then also buy the series on DVD? Lots. Or just buy the DVD and watch the show in marathon ses­sions? Even more. How many peo­ple buy both the text ver­sion of a book (either paper or ebook) and the audio­book? Not many, I would wager. I don’t have any hard num­bers on it, of course, but for most peo­ple I know it’s an either/or. So unless authors are get­ting really fat bank for the audio rights to a book, it should all even out even in a world of per­fect TTS tech­nol­ogy — because some­one who in the present day would buy the audio­book ver­sion of a text would still have to buy the ebook to have their Kindle 8 read it to them. Right? What am I miss­ing about that?

    (Somehow I missed Alex’s com­ment the first time through — so, what he said.)