National Federation Of The Blind Mounts Protest Over Kindle 2 Restrictions
When the Authors Guild successfully agitated for the right to selectively remove the text-to-speech feature from books read on Amazon's Kindle 2, they alienated an entire group of potential consumers: people who have trouble reading normal printed works. Now a group called the Reading Rights Coalition is going to storm the Authors Guild's NYC office tomorrow at noon to protest.
The NFB and the Reading Rights Coalition point out that the Kindle 2 "promised for the first time easy and mainstream access to over 255,000 books" not just for the blind, but for anyone who would benefit from text-to-speech—for instance stroke victims, people with spinal cord injuries, people with dyslexia, people with learning disabilities, and seniors who are losing their vision.
The president of the NFB says the Authors Guild is guilty of promoting discrimination:
The blind and print-disabled have for years utilized text-to-speech technology to read and access information. As technology advances and more books move from hard-copy print to electronic formats, people with print disabilities have for the first time in history the opportunity to enjoy access to books on an equal basis with those who can read print. Authors and publishers who elect to disable text-to-speech for their e-books on the Kindle 2 prevent people who are blind or have other print disabilities from reading these e-books. This is blatant discrimination and we will not tolerate it.
While the Kindle requires vision to operate, it's not unthinkable that in the near future there will be other reading devices that offer voice-prompt navigation, so the text-to-speech issue is larger than just the Kindle 2.
Click here to find out more about the Reading Rights Coalition or to sign their petition.
In case you've forgotten the text to speech controversy from earlier this year, here's a recap:
When Amazon released the Kindle 2 in February the company announced that the device would be able to read e-books aloud using text-to-speech technology. Under pressure from the Authors Guild, Amazon has announced that it will give authors and publishers the ability to disable the text-to-speech function on any or all of their e-books available for the Kindle 2. When the [National Federation of the Blind (NFB)] requested the Guild reconsider, the Guild told them that to read books with text-to-speech, print-disabled persons must either submit to a burdensome special registration system and prove their disabilities or pay extra for the text-to-speech version.
"Informational Protest" [Reading Rights]
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Comments:
It isn't them asking for something unreasonable, nor is it meant for comparing it to audiobooks. This was already an existing feature that the Authors Guild managed to allow rights to disable. I wonder how clearly marked those books are that have it disabled before you download them. Is this Authors Guild just as similar as the RIAA, one that "claims" they are acting in their best interests?
TRUST me, Text to Speech is NOT an Audiobook.
I have a Kindle 2 - and I've tried the text-to-speech. I can understand Stephen Hawkings better than I can understand the Text-to-Speech. I've tried both the "male" and "female" versions.
I also subscribe to Audible. I've listened to Audio Books, right on my Kindle. It is read by a PERSON who speaks clearly, with emotion.
Text To Speech (TTS) reads-in-a-continuous-monotonous-tone-and-although-it-pauses-at-punctuation-marks-it-is-still-monotonous-and-hard-to-follow.
Audio Books show vocal inflection and clarity, and are EASY to follow.
Therefore, when you use TTS, you are simply getting the PRINTED TEXT of the book delivered through a different medium than vision, whereas with Audio Books, you are paying for someone to read them to you.
Also, with an Audiobook, you don't GET the text. You are ONLY paying for having the book read to you.
With TTS, if you are not vision impaired, you can concievable "follow along" while it's reading to you.
So, to conclude this long post, there really is a BIG difference, and there should be no restrictions on TTS -- It's not replacing audiobooks - it's simply giving the vision impaired a vehicle to read the TEXT of the book.
Dooley Noted.
I still don't get the hype behind the Kindle. $350 + $10/eBook and no chance to trade-in the eBook towards a new eBook -vs- $10/book and I can trade it in to a company like Bookman's to get another book.
Or just going to a library and getting them all for free.
The Author's Guild doesn't care about ensuring an artistic and dramatic reading of their works, they care that text-to-speech is going to cut into the market of their overpriced audiobooks. Next thing you know, the Author's Guild is going to sue parents for reading books aloud to their children. Give me a break.
I think it should be the authors choice. TTS can ruin a book as rather than a person interpreting th emotion in how something is said based, what else is happening in the story, it is just a robot saying words. While you get all the same info, the same processing does not take place. I love to read, and find most TTS unbearable by comparison. Now, if I couldnt see, it may be differnt, I dont know, but I cant imagine that if I wrote a book, and wanted to concieve a certain idea, or emotion, I certainly wouldnt want a robot trying to do it.
Unless I'm missing something, this isn't discrimination at all. It's merely a feature that the publishers decide to include or not, and blind people decide to buy or not.
Fat people shouldn't be entitled to two seats for free on an airplane, and blind people shouldn't be entitled to special treatment either (where free markets are concerned). If you want something, you generally should pay for it rather than whine about how it's not included.
If blind folks don't like the product, they certainly don't have to buy it. Personally I think the whole idea is stupid, and will continue to visit my local library, where I can request almost any book and borrow it for free.
This will be a hoot! I worked for a company that was sued when we didn't list our "store locator" details on the web showing ATMs that supported braille. Believe me, the guild will most likely lose this battle without regard to how poor the text-to-speech works. Once a "feature" is made available then it's a right and thus discrimination once removed!
I know it's wrong, but the idea of the National Federation of the Blind "storming" *anything* just gives me a chuckle.
I do believe it was pretty stupid on Amazon's part to *intentionally cripple* an already implemented accessibility feature.
@xtc46: Keep in mind -- many blind people use TTS habitually; that and braille terminals were last I knew the two primary methods for doing nonvisual HCI.
Given such, you should expect that blind people will be just as able to read inflection and emotion into a flat reading by a screen reader as you are to read that same inflection and emotion into the printed word -- indeed, this is what TTS does, making the printed word (with no additional metadata added) accessible; if one wants that extra metadata, one pays for an audiobook, making them separate and noncompeting products.
You don't worry about the integrity of your work being compromised when it's given on a printed page without any vocal inflection; why would you worry about its integrity when read by a TTS system with exactly the same amount of information conveyed?
@xtc46: srsly? did you not read this post? it's not a robot trying to do; its access to an otherwise inaccessible medium. there's absolutely no inflection.
@xtc46: Should it also be the author's choice to put other conditions on how you can read the book? Perhaps the author feels that the mood or emotion of the book will be ruined if you read it in the bathtub, or on the train, and would like to prohibit that too. If there were a feasible way to accomplish that, would you approve?
Once you buy a copy of a book, how you enjoy it is to you. That's a right our copyright law has always protected, until recently. The attempt to make copyright into a way for copyright holders to exert all sorts of new restrictions and controls on their works turns copyright on its head and perverts its intent.
@GuinevereRucker: Um, YOU "can request almost any book and borrow it for free", but it's not that easy for the blind. This could be huge for them--they could download books basically instantly instead of waiting days/weeks to order things from a special Braille library (because 5 bucks says your regular neighborhood library doesn't stock Braille) AND they wouldn't be limited to only those books that have also been made into audiobooks (a damn small fraction) or Braille (again, not all books are printed in Braille).
Imagine you were a member of a library with only a fraction of the books yours has now. Maybe you could order something special in, but you'd have to wait (and it would weigh a heck of a lot more, just as a bonus). Then, imagine that this fraction would magically become larger and that you wouldn't have to wait. That's what TTS for ebooks would do for a blind person.
@GuinevereRucker: In case you missed anything that's going on in our government, unrestricted free market is going out of style.
@bananaboat: I may be ignorant of this, but how were the blind people supposed to read the website where the website said the braille ATMs were located? Did it have an audio feature online? Or were they supposed to ask a friend or family member look it up for them? Just curious.
Regarding the original post, I think it would be a good thing for the blind. My dad lost his vision two years before he died (diabetes) and he really enjoyed the audio books I bought for him. But the selection was lousy, and he had very intelligent taste. Shame, most of the stuff available on audio books was book-of-the-month crap. I only found a few worth his while. And he was newly blind with a LOT of free time as he was retired. He'd had it with talk radio and was bored. It would have been really nice for him to download books that he really enjoyed, on subjects he found interesting, and been able to have them read through the audio feature.
@Julia789: Most websites can be read with text-to-speech software not so different from the feature the Authors' Guild wants to disable in the Kindle 2.
@HogwartsAlum: I think the concern is that, over time, text-to-speech will improve to the point where it's comparable to audiobooks.
Recall that less than a decade ago, the idea of listening to a music collection or watching a film on your 640x280 monitor would have been laughable.
If there was some way that authors could craft language that protects their rights, while allowing something that doesn't compete with aspects of those rights, I'm sure most authors would be for it.
Tough though. Authors deserve compensation for their work (most are vastly underpaid for their work), while everyone also wants differently-abled people to be able to mainstream as much as we can allow.
I hope they are marked very clearly. It opens up a whole can of worms for people to buy them thinking that the Kindle will read it and then it won't, and the marking is tiny or nonexistent.
@Dooley: For now. I think this is the unspoken concern (see my above comment) that's driving the authors to start a fight with probably the most sympathetic group one could imagine.
If only it was the Orphaned Children's Reading Rights Coalition, to make it even more cringe-worthy.
@Craig Hermann: DAMN those fancy-pants authors that you read expecting, y'know, to make a living from their writing. Damn them. To HELL!
Oh, you work for free, right?
@Trai_Dep:
The funny thing is.. I have the Audiobook "A Brief History Of Time" by Stephen Hawking .. It is read by Michael Jackson (no not the singer) who does a great job reading it... He reads it like a Science professor would read it to his class.
Now, if I had the TEXT version, and used TTS, then I would also have the "Read by the author" version.
Ouch, that was bad.. I'm sorry. Really.
xD
@Trai_Dep:
I'm sorry, I just don't see that happening. There is a HUGE difference between a machine reading something and a performer reading it. The human voice has nuances of speech and emotion that a computer just can't duplicate (unless it's HAL, in which case I'm running away!).
It is tough. It's something I didn't think about before, so I'm kind of glad Consumerist posted this. If and when I get to this point, I will definitely have to consider this in any contract that I'm entering into.
If it happens that people CAN'T read aloud my book(s) on their Kindle, why, I'll read it myself and podcast my readings on my website for free! HA! ;)
@dwasifar:
Read my book(s) in the tub! Read them on a train!
Read them in the bed or read them in the rain!
Read them with eggs, or read them with ham!
I do not care! Just read them, Sam!
Dammit, I better get off this website and get back to work!!!
@howie_in_az: Some people travel a lot. Some people don't have access to a great library. Some people enjoy holding something physical.
I agree that the $350 is steep, especially considering that after you buy the Kindle you have to buy the books. But for people who travel a lot, carrying 10 books in a Kindle is better than carrying 10 paperbacks.
@Craig Hermann: That darn Author's Guild. Working on behalf of its members. Doesn't it know it's supposed to take money out of its members pockets and give away their books free to the public. After all, everything on the internet should be free and nobody should make any money at all.
@GuinevereRucker: Yeah!! If they wanted to see, they wouldn't have chosen to be born blind would they?
@Oranges w/ Cheese: They make one model and then install it wherever it's needed. And what Grabraham said. :)
@HogwartsAlum: I'd think so, and certainly for the near term.
But I can see people saying the same thing ten years ago about listening to music. On a computer?! WHAT?!
> Never bet against Silicon Valley not beating a technical challenge.
That said, really complicated situation, both of whom are sympathetic. I'm positive if writers could have some way to split the disabled market from the spoken word, abled one, most would happily let sight-impaired fans enjoy their work for a penny and an emailed thanks.
@howie_in_az: I wouldn't spend the money for a Kindle, but I'd spend the money for a Kindle-like reader designed especially for comic books. It'd be a huge space saver. How 'bout it, science?
@dwasifar: *You* can read the book anyway you want. However, you can't sell a reading of the book, by you or your nifty machine. Therein lies the difference.
@howie_in_az: We have a Kindle for several different reasons. Wife is legally blind - she can read large print, and being able to read (as opposed to having to wait for a special/expensive large print edition) is nice. The samples of the book that Amazon offers (for free) make it useful. And we like carrying several books around at a time.
Is it cheap? No - but it's something we're will to pay for.
And my wife does use the TTS occasionally. She likes it. We belong to audible, and she gets books from the Library for the Blind as well. TTS is a nice feature, but it's definitely not the same as having a professional read to you.
@DangerMouse: Exactly. @GuinevereRucker ought to take a look at the catalog the Library for the Blind sends out sometime. Takes quite a while for books that come to the public library to make it to the Library for the Blind.
@Trai_Dep:
Your response is a great example of the reason the Consumerist exists--because some people are worried about money to the point that they don't care how they may be negatively affecting others. A great piece of new technology comes out that has the ability to help people with a number of different disabilities, and that feature gets removed for fear of lost profits. Boo hoo.
I'm Visually impair blind by law. i use TTS (Text to Speech) on my PC. note i do not use it for every written word but when i hit a webpage or document with more than a few words to read it's easier for me to just highlight it hit ctrl C and let the computer read it for me. (reads the clipboard)
Now the TTS i use does have a good inflection algarithem i prefer true synth over that stupid sampled crap like AT&T truevoice. (sounds harible for long sessions)
The monotone TTS is easer to block out of your conchous mind and convert into a true story (same as when you read a book and assign voices faces exct to the text and voices in your mind)
An E-Book reader portible that can do TTS adn is designed for it. H E-Doubble hockky sticks YA!
spoken word is all good and fine but ALOT of audio books i loved as text being red by my pc suck simply do to the narator.
What they did is rong in so many diffrent levels its silly.
And yes i got a chuckle over the blind storming the offices.
I've ben in a group of canes and it can get... confusing when to many folks try to use em at once :)
Toshay parry thrust tap tap thrust parry block tap tap ....
(yes i use a cane in unfamuler places no depth preception at all.)
@Trai_Dep:
Actually, people had the vision of having libraries of music and video on computers way back in the '70s. I think I agree with HogwartsAlum on that we likely won't see inflection properly conveyed by standard computing technology. Sure I could make some of the high-end TTS programs do just as good a job with the reading of a passage as a human would, but it'd require many fold times the amount of time marking the inflection up and perfecting the reading, at that it'd be more time and cost effective to just hire a reader.
The thing is, we need a strong general AI in order to do it, and at that point we've got a whole slew of other problems that this particular issue will be more than moot.
Will TTS get better? Yes. Will it provide emotional inflection (sound human)? Not until we have computers simulating human emotion, and then we have other ethical issues.
@SFbiotch: Its access to a feature they dont want their product to have. If they dont want a robot reading their text they should be able to prevent it, just like they could just not sell it as an ebook at all. If you then scanned it in and uploaded it, you would be in violation of copywrite laws.
Charles (the commentor above) makes a good point in that with habitual use, it is not distracting and the flat tone would actually HELP in being able to assign a made up voice to the character as I would in my head.
@DangerMouse: That's a good point, but in a free market it's not a company's responsibility to cater to blind people just because they don't have as many books as others.
As much as I dislike many large companies (which is part of why I read this blog), it's not fair to *require* companies to offer free services to the disabled. In fact it's even ok for companies to *make* money by offering services to them. In this case, it appears that no law is being broken, and the companies are just doing what they do best - making money. You can call it taking advantage if you want, especially when a group of people complain and the media makes it a sob story, but these companies pay a lot of taxes as well, which are supposed to be for the public good.
@Craig Hermann: Tee-Hee. You used "a great piece of new technology" in the same sentence as "Kindle"
So, you work for free, right? Or, it's only the other guy that should.
I was eagerly awaiting this! This was clearly discriminatory of some groups of people, which would in fact force them to buy the audio books which are more expensive instead. The quality between text to speech and a book being read by a professional is all to obviously different.
@howie_in_az: Lets say you make some 6-figure salary and work a 60 hour work week with a moderate public commute. Now, you want something fast and convenient to read on the trains. $10 means nothing to you, its literally not worth your time to trade in books, or visit the library. In this case, the Kindle makes perfect sense. You can pick out a book and be reading it in 10 minutes.
@atalantapendragonne: Ahhhh I understand now. Thanks for clearing that up for me. I did not know the application could be used online on everyday websites. I had just assumed certain websites made available an audio feature of some sort.
I knew text to speech applications were available, but I had thought they were limited to, say, straightforward word documents, and other sort of straightforward text documents such as the online books, etc. I didn't imagine they would be able to grab an article off a website without perhaps reading aloud every advertisement on the sides of the page?
@GuinevereRucker: It is fair, however, to express discontent about the activities of a company and garner public support against those activities, which is all this group appears to be doing. The company isn't required to do anything, but public pressure and negative press is a big motivator. Your argument is unnecessary - no one is making the company do anything.
@Trai_Dep:
I like how you repeated yourself with the "You work for free, right?" line, as if to say, "How dare you criticize the business practices of others?" Why are you reading the Consumerist if you have no interest in criticizing unfair or discriminating business? I don't hate business, I just hate BAD business.
@Craig Hermann: Well, it's that authors make money from the licensing of their work, which you seem to think is absurd.
So, I'm wondering if you're so free with compensation for your work product as you are with theirs. Or, is it a one-way street: artists shouldn't make money?
Or, should your seething, writhing envy be their payment in full?
If my book gets published, I promise I won't do this. If you're gonna spend $350 on a Kindle and then another $10 on my book, I want you to be able to read it.
It's not equivalent to an audiobook to have a computer read it. An audiobook utilizes a performer or the author him/herself to read the book. It's not the same thing at all. Besides, the Kindle will read the newspaper to you, won't it? Are they going to say the thing can't read the grocery ads to someone's nearly blind grandma?