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The scariest thing about the Kindle 2’s text to speech capabilities
October 15, 2009 | 8:51 am
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By David Rothman
How good is the Kindle 2’s text to speech feature?
No, the TTS isn’t the equal of a human voice, especially one as memorable as that of Jim Dale, the Harry Potter narrator shown with actress Glenn Close.
Many have complained of the lack of inflection. Some have cited this as one reason for Amazon and others not to disable TTS to satisfy the whims of publishers. I myself think that playing text is fair use, just as large purple characters or a certain typeface would be.
In all honesty, however, the K2’s speech synthesis is far, far better than many other TTS systems. I can finally understand the speech with hardly any difficulty. And I suspect that the TTS is going to improve considerably in the future—a bit of a scary prospect since this could intensify opposition by certain publishers.
Pro-TTS legislation, please
That said, we really need to clarify the fair use aspect. Legislation, anyone? The irony is that publishers’ revenue might well increase with anti-TTS DRM banned by law. Audio book revenue is just a fraction of the industry total. TTS makes e-books much more useful for commuters, joggers and other exercisers—not just people with disabilities. What a boost TTS could give e-books!
Could it be that some publishers are less worried about revenue loss from TTS in particular and more about the rise of e-books in general?
Also of interest: Adobe/OverDrive e-book deal on hold at L.A. Public Library over text-to-speech controversy.
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Comments:
I agree. The Authors Guild and publishers need to be looking to the opportunities of Text to Speech and not the phantom losses of audio book sales. Audio books are a presentation and human interpretation of the book that TTS can never match. TTS can be made better and more practical though so it can give the consumer more options on when and where they can “read” the text.
Reading needs to be viewed as competing for peoples down time. If I’m really into a book but I have to do an activity where I can’t visually read (wash dishes, commute, walk the dog, exercise) and I have the option to switch to TTS then I’m going to consume (purchase) more books. If not I’m forced to make an alternate choice.
For about 5 years I was listening to audio books and consuming twice as many books. I got pissed off at the industry’s response to TTS so I’ve stopped buying audio books and now I listen to music and podcasts. I keep up on current events and it’s much easier to not have to keep track of where I am in two books.
If you are going to talk copyright, you really need to understand the basics.
TTS is an element of copyright, and Congress cannot legislate away copyright.
Fair use means quoting a small portion of a work in a review or scholarly article, not quoting the whole dang work for your personal use.
TTS isn’t remotely similar to changing the font size or color.
The real heart of this mess is that most publishers have no legal right to allow TTS with their books because they haven’t contracted those rights with their authors.
In publishing, rights refer to the different types of format sales for a written work. Some of the rights that can be contracted from an author are the right to publish a paperback version, a hardcover version, an ebook version, and an audio version of a work.
TTS really hasn’t been clarified as a right. Some think it is part of the ebook rights, some audio book rights, and some a right by itself. This can only be decided by a major court case, and the TTS right has so little value that no one will bother to take it to court.
The best, but, unfortunately, the most expensive solution, is for publishers to offer a new contract or codicil to the contract of each author for each book for TTS.
Again, TTS has so little value as a right that I doubt this will happen.
In the case of many of the small publishers, the authors have agreed to allow TTS without it being specified as a right in their contract so the ebook is DRM free. Most of us do this for the sight impaired.
There is no real underlying reason for the TTS paranoia; audio books are recorded *performances* closer to music and TV shows than actual books (especially the abridged versions) while TTS is merely a generic rendering/parsing of text; no different than choosing a display face and font size in a good reader application.
The publishers need to start thinking in terms of end user service cause they’re digging their own graves right now with their anti-consumer ebook policies.
Until the techies come up with an “Inflexion Markup Language” to provide inflexion cues and render natural computerized performances there is no real competition for human performance.
Of course, a true Inflexion Markup standard is just a few years away (the video game industry alone will ensure we get one) but that’s a problem for the future.
Why aren’t publishers freaked out that we can change font-sizes, and therefore don’t have to buy ‘large-print’ e-books? OOOOOHHHHHH! Then they’d have to *create* large-print e-books.
Seriously, though, who among us would choose to listen to an entire text-to-speech book if they didn’t have to? And who would buy *both* print *and* audio — with its *miserable* (or nonexistent) bookmarking, for the purpose of being able to continue hands-free in the same book he or she was reading with their eyes? Publishers are losing exactly *zero* audiobook sales to tts.
It’s plain, clueless panic. Same as always.
I think publishers need to relax, quit worrying about the possibility of losing a few bucks, and just let us consumers have some freedom. I think if they try to be protective and greedy about ebooks, the public will react negatively, and the backlash will be increased pirating, cracking, and other “no-no’s”. If the public perceives “publishers” as greedy corporations (as it now see the recording industry), the public is bound to retaliate however it can, like a rebellious teen under a overly strict parent.
Text-to-speech is a natural place that technology WILL take us. Publishers would be wise to embrace the change now, before it’s too late.
In another light, allowing TTS could be one ‘value added’ reason for publishers to keep ebook prices artificially high, as they desire to do.
“TTS is an element of copyright, and Congress cannot legislate away copyright”
Umm.. There is already a DMCA exemption for removing DRM in order to facilitate TTS, as I outlined in my post here:
http://www.teleread.com/2009/10/13/two-weeks-with-an-astak-5-preconceptions/#comment-1146935
Here’s the appropriate wiki entry for reference as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millenium_Copyright_Act#Anti-circumvention_exemptions
The only problem at this point is that it’s up to the consumer to come up with the DRM circumvention, instead of being able to demand that the DRM be modified or removed by the publisher. By adding TTS DRM, the publishers are in effect making it perfectly legal to remove ALL DRM from their files, simply because there’s no way to selectively remove just the TTS part.
To add – that exemption is from November 2006, and it’ll be very interesting to see if it gets upheld or changed/removed. We’re close to another update, and I think it’s important that people become aware of it before the publishing industry pressures them to remove it.
Frode: I’d love for easy DMCA circumvention exemptions to exist even for e-book lovers without disabilities. I’m skeptical. Still, I’ll call your posts to the attention of a copyright lawyer I know and see if she’ll comment.
Thanks,
David
Frode says, ““TTS is an element of copyright, and Congress cannot legislate away copyright”
Umm.. There is already a DMCA exemption for removing DRM in order to facilitate TTS, as I outlined in my post here:”
The copyright belongs to the author, and TTS is one of the rights within the copyright in the same way as paperback and audio rights are part of that copyright.
Unless the author leases or gives permission for the publisher or consumer to use TTS, then no one, including Congress, can take that element of copyright without stealing the copyright or tossing the whole concept of copyright away.
DRM is something added to the material by the publisher or distributor to protect the copyright, but it isn’t part of the copyright.
But by giving people permission to remove the DRM for accessibility reasons, haven’t they already done exactly that? Even if indirectly? It seems to imply that TTS rights is already implicitly a part of an ebook, whether the the author likes it or not, at least as long as that exemption stands.
Marilynn Byerly, you keep saying that TTS is one of the rights within copyright, but you are flat-out wrong. Derivative works are protected from distribution, yes, but who is distributing a derivative work here? In the same way that I can make my own audiobook as long as I don’t distribute it to others, I can use a machine to transform a work I have purchased.
The only reasonable argument to the contrary is that Amazon owns the Kindle device, and the TTS constitutes a transfer of audio from Amazon to the reader. I hope that no one makes such an argument, though, as the consequences would be disastrous.