Re: Wait, Wait... The Kindle Swindle?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Bob Frankston" <Bob19-0501 () bobf frankston com>
Date: February 27, 2009 4:31:10 PM EST
To: <dave () farber net>, "'ip'" <ip () v2 listbox com>
Cc: "'Glenn S. Tenney'" <tenney () think org>
Subject: RE: [IP] Wait, Wait... The Kindle Swindle?

Capturing the “value chain” is indeed problematic. Or think of this as  
everything being negotiated – wonderful for those who think haggling  
over the price is more fun than actually using the products or if one  
is a lawyer.

Dave, as a teacher don’t you deserve a portion of the value created by  
your students? With modern neuroscience we should be able to implant  
the necessary DRM software in each student. Hmm – if you offered a  
discount for tuition in return for indenturing students …

[ I have suggested for years that we claim a % from our Phd's of their  
capital gains. So far no success djf]

Should we expect books to be licensed instead of sold? After all we  
seem to have developed a tradition of giving authors control to any  
value that flows from their work and leases wouldn’t give ownership  
rights.

I don't want to trivialize a real issue -- authors do need to be  
compensated and when a newspaper repurposes the content you can argue  
that they changed the terms of the original deal.

But it has a real downside as in the case of WGBH finding it had  
problems trying to rebroadcast “Eyes on the Prize” because it didn’t  
have sufficient rights to Happy Birthday (among other issues) (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/01/16/eyes_on_the_prize_off_the_shelf/ 
). It also found it was licensed for VHS but not DVD! Bits are not  
bits in this world. Here too I can understand that if a DVD is much  
better quality then they bits are indeed different.

Remember that the record industry had to fight to establish the  
principle that playing a record was not the same as performing sheet  
music. Fortunately we didn’t confuse the issue by having an automatic  
sheet music player as we can today (like the book reader). Would such  
a machine owe a royalty each time it preformed?

What brings this home to this list is the question of what one would  
charge per play and consequences. I’ve written that the funding model  
of telecom prevents us from getting the benefits of low marginal cost.  
What if iPod owners couldn’t buy but had a to pay for the amount of  
time they played each tune and what if the price varied by song,  
quality, volume, time of day, venue …


-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2009 15:49
To: ip
Subject: [IP] Wait, Wait... The Kindle Swindle?

oes -- say Apple-- need to get voice rights to use their speek on non-
Apple software?

djf

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Glenn S. Tenney" <tenney () think org>
Date: February 27, 2009 3:06:05 PM EST
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Wait, Wait... The Kindle Swindle?

Dave,

I think that this would be of interest to IP, but didn't see it hit
the list so I'm re-sending it.

Not that I agree with Mr. Blount, but if the Authors Guild's point
holds water in the case of the Kindle, then what about, for example,
Apple's built-in Text To Speech capabilities and web-sites or PDFs?

--
Glenn Tenney CISSP CISM



OPINION | February 25, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor: The Kindle Swindle?
By ROY BLOUNT Jr.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/opinion/25blount.html?emc=eta1

...

The Kindle 2 is a portable, wireless, paperback-size device onto which
people can download a virtual library of digitalized titles. Amazon
sells these downloads, and where the books are under copyright, it
pays royalties to the authors and publishers.

Serves readers, pays writers: so far, so good. But there's another
thing about Kindle 2 - its heavily marketed text-to-speech function.
Kindle 2 can read books aloud. And Kindle 2 is not paying anyone for
audio rights.

...

What the guild is asserting is that authors have a right to a fair
share of the value that audio adds to Kindle 2's version of books. For
this, the guild is being assailed. On the National Federation of the
Blind's Web site, the guild is accused of arguing that it is illegal
for blind people to use "readers, either human or machine, to access
books that are not available in alternative formats like Braille or
audio."

In fact, publishers, authors and American copyright laws have long
provided for free audio availability to the blind and the guild is all
for technologies that expand that availability. (The federation,
though, points out that blind readers can't independently use the
Kindle 2's visual, on-screen controls.) But that doesn't mean Amazon
should be able, without copyright-holders' participation, to pass that
service on to everyone.

The guild is also accused of wanting to profiteer off family bedtime
rituals. A lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation sarcastically
warned that "parents everywhere should be on the lookout for legal
papers haling them into court for reading to their kids."

For the record: no, the Authors Guild does not expect royalties from
anybody doing non-commercial performances of "Goodnight Moon." If
parents want to send their children off to bed with the voice of
Kindle 2, however, it's another matter.





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