Talking Up a Storm: E-Books and Text-to-Speech Technology

Amazon’s recent foray into the electronic book business can be described in no other way than as a resounding success. In a short period of time, Amazon’s Kindle has done for the electronic book what Apple’s iPod did for electronic music: that is, make it easily accessible, downloadable and, most importantly, cool. However, Amazon’s attempts to find new ways to exploit this medium and enhance the reading experience have met with their fair share of controversy. The Kindle 2 recently hit the market, and it included a new feature that had the publishing industry up in arms and threatening suit. What was this feature? It’s commonly referred to as “text to speech,” but according to representatives for the publishing industry and the Authors Guild, it may represent the beginning of the end for the burgeoning audio book market, in addition to constituting a blatant violation of existing copyright law. From a copyright point of view, does text-to-speech technology require a license? And should publishers be legitimately concerned about the demise of the audio book?

What exactly is an e-book? Quite simply, it is nothing more than an electronic version of a traditional paper copy of a book. An e-book is usually in some type of computer readable format (such as .doc, .pdf, etc.) and can be read on any type of electronic device capable of displaying that particular file type. E-books have been around for quite some time but have had a limited appeal because of the fact that many people prefer the portability and ease of use of traditional printed media, as opposed to being tethered to a computer screen. Keenly aware of these shortcomings, several manufacturers attempted to develop dedicated hardware devices that would emulate the traditional book-reading experience while at the same time providing many advantages only possible with e-book technology, such as storage of hundreds or thousands of books on a single device and instant access to titles via downloading.