Federation of the Blind Criticizes Authors Guild

The National Federation of the Blind opposed the Authors Guild’s stance on the Amazon Kindle 2′s newest audio feature.

Dr. Marc Maurer, the Federation’s president, praised the new Kindle function that automatically converts digital books into computerized audio books. He also encouraged Amazon to make the technology easier for the blind to use.

As GalleyCat reported, the Authors Guild is debating how rights should be negotiated for these 21st Century audio books. Here’s more from the Federation:

“[The Authors Guild's] position on the inclusion of text-to-speech technology in the Kindle 2 is harmful to blind people. The Authors Guild says that having a book read aloud by a machine in the privacy of one’s home or vehicle is a copyright infringement. But blind people routinely use readers, either human or machine, to access books that are not available in alternative formats like Braille or audio. Up until now, no one has argued that this is illegal, but now the Authors Guild says that it is. This is absolutely wrong.”

(Via.)

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