[A2k] Cory Doctorow: Kindle owners start to lose text-to-speech on purchased books (boingboing)

[Manon Ress]

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/05/14/kindle-owners-start.html

Kindle owners start to lose text-to-speech on purchased books -- how
do DRM-free Kindle books work?
Posted by Cory Doctorow, May 14, 2009 5:22 AM | permalink

Back in February, the Authors Guild, a lobby group representing less
than 10,000 writers, argued that the Kindle's ability to read text
aloud infringed on copyright (it doesn't -- and even if it does, the
infringement lies not in including the feature, but rather in using
it; this is the same principle that makes the VCR legal). Amazon
folded and agreed to revoke the feature.

Now comes some news about how they're doing this, from the Knowledge
Ecology International site:

    Beginning yesterday, Random House Publishers began to disable text-
to-speech remotely. The TTS function has apparently been remotely
disabled in over 40 works so far. Affected titles include works by
Toni Morrison, Stephen King, and others. Other notable titles include
Andrew Meachem's American Lion, and five of the top ten Random House
best-sellers in the Kindle store.

I've been trying to get a statement from Amazon about this since
February: how does disabling text-to-speech work? It appears that
there's a text-to-speech "flag" in the Kindle file-format that the
Kindle looks for and responds to, disabling the feature if it's set to
0 (a perl script called mobi2mobi can reset the bit to 1).

But what no one at Amazon will tell me is what other flags are lurking
in the Kindle format: is there a "real only once" flag? A "no turning
the pages backwards" flag?

I'm specifically interested because Amazon has announced a "DRM-free"
version of the Kindle format and I'd love to sell my books on the
platform if it's really DRM-free. To that end, I've put three
questions to Amazon:

1. Is there anything in the Kindle EULA that prohibits moving your
purchased DRM-free Kindle files to a competing device?

2. Is there anything in the Kindle file-format (such as a patent or
trade-secret) that would make it illegal to produce a Kindle format-
reader or converter for a competing device?

3. What flags are in the DRM-free Kindle format, and can a DRM-free
Kindle file have its features revoked after you purchase it?

I've sent these questions repeatedly to my contact at Amazon for
months with no response. I've tweeted about it. I've sent in requests
on behalf of the Guardian newspaper to their press office without even
getting an acknowledgement. And I've asked a major publisher that is
working with Amazon to release DRM-free versions of its books to put
the question to their Amazon rep, and they haven't gotten a response.

I love Amazon's physical-goods business. I buy everything from them,
from my coffee-maker to my DVDs. I love their consumer-friendly
policies, and their innovative business practices. I just wish their
electronic delivery business was as good as their physical goods side.
I have a lot of hope for a DRM-free Kindle format, but it's downright
creepy when no one at Amazon will even respond to three simple, basic
questions about it.

Kindle 2 vs Reading Disabled Students
Previously:

    * When it comes to the Kindle, authors are focused on the wrong
risk ...
    * Wil Wheaton vs. Authors' Guild vs. Kindle - Boing Boing
    * Report from protest for blind rights at Authors Guild
yesterday ...
    * National Federation for the Blind protest at Authors Guild in
NYC ...
    * Amazon Kindle: the Web makes Amazon go bad crazy - Boing Boing


***************************************************************************
Manon Ress
manon.ress@keionline.org
Knowledge Ecology International
1621 Connecticut Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20009 USA
Tel.:  +1.202.332.2670, Fax: +1.202.332.2673