[A2k] WIPO Meeting the Needs of the Visually Impaired Persons (July 13 in Geneva)

[Federico Heinz]

On 13/07/2009, Claude Almansi wrote:
> However, when Federico Heinz asked him about publishers disabling
> text-to-speech in Kindle texts, he answered that Amazon had forgotten to
> negotiate the "audio rights".

Later, talking with him in the lobby, I told him that was a lame answer, that
audio rights might have been needed if Amazon had distributed a recording of
the sound-to-speech output, but were not needed in this case: if I purchase a
book, I don't need audio right to read it aloud to my children, and neither do I
need audio rights to get my computer to read it aloud to them.

After that exchange, he admitted that publishers were fighting a lost cause
there, and that it was just a matter of time until common sense sets in.

	Fede