Thursday, May 21, 2009

Kindle vs. Accessibility

I've just read two articles (thanks Web4Lib) about Random House being able to disable a fuction in Kindle... remotely.
Remote kill flags surface in Kindle is concise.
The other one by Meredith Filak gives more information.
Reading these articles makes me think about quality of TTS(text to speech)function vs quality of audiobooks, and the copyright (my favorite subject). Amazon doesn't have the right to sell e-books with TTS because of copyright. Random House has the right to disable a technical fuction. Now be ready for this: TTS was available in OS like Apple (1984) or Windows95! So, now if we have an e-book downloaded in our Pc (OS Windows 2000, with Narrator) must we disable this function? Or better, we downloaded a free software ATTS3.6 long ago... Must we uninstall it? Just because a group of people (printing press, editors) are not aware of the opportunity of having TTS everywhere, not only Kindle? Do you create a work for having it locked up in only one format (paper, Kindle, whatever) or because you want as many people as possible having access to it?
And what happens to previous downloads? Believe me, if Amazon has remote control (keyword in copyright subject) over your Kindle even after purchase, then they've already changed your previous version to the new one (with no TTS) and without asking permission.
In a near future, libraries won't have the right to read aloud their books, unless they pay for it.
Aesop's moral lesson: if you are a disabled reader, don't buy Kindle.

1 comment:

Blue Priestess said...

O_O

I'm sorry, but when I'll want read a book aloud I'll do it.

Everytime that bunch of simpleton of culture do something to 'protect' it, dig a little more to have ready culture's grave.

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