News that the second iteration of the Amazon Kindle would have text-to-speech functionality prompted talk about the death of the audio book, but those fears appear to have been premature.
Amazon will now have rights holders opt in to the Kindle 2’s “Read to Me” feature, the company announced on Friday, so it will likely take some time before Amazon gets approval from those rights holders on its entire collection.
The offering converts books into speech. Customers can switch back and forth between reading and listening, and can select a female or male voice. Read-to-Me also works for newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other personal documents.
“If you are in the kitchen and you want to put the feel like being read to, the Kindle will read to you,” Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said at the Kindle 2 launch, where he demoed the technology by having the Kindle 2 read Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address aloud through its stereo speakers.
Rights holders were apparently not too thrilled with the feature. Amazon maintains that it has not violated any law with “Read to Me” but wants to respect the rights of copyright holders.
“Kindle 2’s experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given,” the company said in a statement. “We strongly believe many rights holders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver’s seat.”
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