When it comes to the Kindle, authors are focused on the wrong risk

By Cory Doctorow at 2:53 am Tuesday, Mar 31

My latest Guardian column, "Authors have lost the plot in Kindle battle," argues that the Authors' Guild is nuts to focus on the text-to-speech feature, and should really be paying attention to the fact that it's apparently possible to remotely disable features in the ebook reader.

Maybe I'm right and maybe I'm wrong, but the important thing is, we don't need new theories about copyright law to test the proposition. The existing, totally non-controversial aspect of copyright law that says, "Amazon can't publish and sell my book without my permission" covers the territory nicely.

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.

Authors have lost the plot in Kindle battle