Illegal? Gray Area.

[Andy]

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/121556

The Kindle 2's text-to-speech function, which will use a computerized voice to read aloud anything displayed on the device's screen. The problem? The Authors Guild says that that's against the law.

The challenge revolves around audiobooks, which are treated separately from printed material from a copyright standpoint.
I think Amazon should win this one. For one, telling a computer to read text is way different from an audiobook. No voice differentiation, no sound effects. Questionable voice quality? Would all text-to-speech programs be illegal? Ha! :rolleyes:

Still, it's an interesting dispute. For some people, this free option may be preferable to buying an audiobook. This sort of thing could impact the audiobook market.

[appleofmyeye]

My macbook's speech function is actually very high quality :). I've copied lots of stories into a word document just to listen :P. I agree that amazon should win. I mean, doesn't the money go to the same place? Unless the same book is licensed under a different company O_o.

[Shaun]

I have a post about this coming up on my blog tomorrow at 3:30 PM PST. Just so you all know. I'll edit this post with a link later.