If the Amazon Kindle can automatically read a book out-loud, has the company violated the author’s digital rights?

Yesterday, the Authors Guild made literary headlines when its executive director Paul Aiken criticized the Amazon Kindle 2′s newest feature: a friendly, robotic voice that reads any digital book out-loud. Aiken told the press: “They don’t have the right to read a book out loud … That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”

GalleyCat caught up with web pioneer and novelist Cory Doctorow at the Tools of Change conference, and he criticized the Authors Guild’s new position. Yesterday, Doctorow (website here) stirred up the TOC crowd with a passionate anti-Digital Rights Management keynote entitled: “Digital Distribution and the Whip Hand: Don’t Get iTunesed with your eBooks.”