Just in case you weren’t entirely sure that sanity in the world of digital media is an endangered species, read up not only on the Google Book Search settlement, but the Amazon Kindle text-to-speech copyright infringement claim:

Yesterday, hundreds of people gathered in front of the headquarters of The Authors Guild in New York City to protest the removal of text-to-speech capabilities in Amazon’s new Kindle 2 ebook device.

You may remember a few months ago, when The Authors Guild claimed (falsely) that the text-to-speech feature violated copyright law, and forced Amazon to disable it.

Now, the people who would have benefited most from the new feature — the blind, and others with reading disabilities — have made it clear that they’re not going to stand for it.

The amount of damage that over-zealous and mis-informed copyright claims can do is just mind-boggling. Remember, this is the same Authors Guild that’s involved in the Google Book Search settlement. How much more damage to our basic freedom to read are they going to try to incur in the name of protecting authors’ rights?

In a statement, The Authors Guild called the protest
“unfortunate and unnecessary,” and declared, “We will not
surrender our members’ economic rights to Amazon or anyone
else.” They offered a novel solution to the problem: Amazon
could maintain a registry of verified blind and disabled
people, who would be granted special permission to use the
text-to-speech feature.

The suggestion is of course ridiculous. Contrary to The
Authors Guild’s claims, the text-to-speech feature does not
violate copyright law and does not pose any competitive threat
to writers. The feature should be enabled for all Kindle
customers, not just those with disabilities.

More at Gizmodo. And an excellent article by Cory Doctorow in the Guardian that really illuminates the depth of the issue:

Amazon’s Kindle 2 text-to-speech feature is not so much violating authors’ copyright but rather basic consumer rights

…But while we were all running our mouths about the plausibility of the singularity emerging from Amazon’s text-to-speech R&D, a much juicier issue was escaping our notice: it is technically possible for Amazon to switch off the text-to-speech feature for some or all books.

That’s a hell of a thing, isn’t it? Now that Amazon has agreed with the Authors Guild that text-to-speech will only be switched on for authors who sign a contract permitting it, we should all be goggling in amazement at the idea that this can be accomplished.

…Would you buy a car if it was known that your air-conditioner and stereo system could be remotely disabled? Or if we suddenly discovered that the manufacturer could remotely lock you out of your boot in order to assuage some pressure group who’d rather you no longer be allowed to carry parcels around? It’s one thing for next year’s model to ship without the fantastic stereo system but it’s another thing entirely for the manufacturer to rip it out of your dashboard after you’ve bought it.

If I were running the Authors Guild, this would be my number one issue: we can’t afford to allow our books to be used to lure readers into purchasing devices that can turn against them…

Which worrying thought is further illuminated here:

“Much has been made about Kindle’s downstream capabilities- the fact that you can acquire the complete contents of any Kindle-formatted book in under a minute, provided you’re within range of a cell tower. But what about the data it transmits upstream, back to Amazon.com? The Kindle license agreement and terms of use are instructive in this regard. In the subsection entitled “Information Received,” the agreement states:

“The Device Software will provide Amazon with data about your Device and its interaction with the Service (such as available memory, up-time, log files and signal strength) and information related to content on your Device and your use of it (such as automatic bookmarking of the last page read and content deletions from the Device).” Here’s the especially intriguing part: “Annotations, bookmarks, notes, highlights, or similar markings you make on your Device are backed up through the service and subject to the Amazon.com privacy notice.” And there, it’s worth mentioning, all of the data you generate while reading on your Kindle falls within the purview of “the information we [Amazon.com] collect and analyze” for marketing and related purposes.”

Similarly, under the Google Book Search settlement, Google will obtain upstream data on what is being read in libraries — whose mission is to protect our reading privacy. And that will be done via the ONE computer per library that will be allowed for free access to the Google Book Search.

A colleague recently sent me to www.nextup.com for an amusing time-waster. Which is what one needs, desperately, these days, to take one’s mind off this stuff. But it’s a perfect example of how ubiquitous that TTS technology is. I can have anything on my computer read outloud to me by Exciting New Nuance RealSpeak Voice Sangeeta (Indian UK) — so of course I should be able to have a book read to me by a Kindle while I potter around the kitchen making focaccia and fatoosh. (I’m an ex-pat; rules don’t apply. I put focaccia in fatoosh.) But I digress.

Or do I? Dark days, indeed. I think I need some fatoosh.

[Update: It gets weirder. Kindle users can have their accounts banned, and lose access to the books they've "purchased" -- oddly enough, they don't really own them. They've only purchased access to those books, and that access can be revoked. http://www.teleread.org/2009/04/07/amazon-bans-account-customer-looses-all-kindle-books/]

[Further update: In case you'd like an alternative to this virtual book ownership problem: "IndieBound took a big, fun step today: they released an iPhone app. Though they’re saying ecommerce and even ebooks are coming soon, the focus of the app as it stands is information.
There are many lists—bestsellers and recommendations, in a variety of categories—along with the ability to search for books and/or bookstores. Tapping into the store search area automatically picks up your current location (if permitted) and instantly gives you a list of the nearest independent booksellers, or you can give it a different starting point.
Using the book search (or tapping any title on any of the aforementioned lists) gets you a screen of very basic info for that book. Just the cover art, pub data, either a description or a bookseller’s recommendation, and a button for buying online." ]