Amazon Kindle 2 Blind To Users Needs
Remember the days when it was legal to read a book to your kids? Apparently those days are gone, if you believe the position of the Authors Guild. They contend that if you buy a book to read with your eyes, you need to pay for it again if you want to turn it into a spoken word performance. Amazon apparently believes it too.
April 7th, about 300 blind people, plus dogs and kids, gathered outside the Authors Guild headquarters in New York to protest their bogus copyright claim and the fact that Amazon caved into it and disabled the text-to-speech capability found in the original Kindle when they released the Kindle 2.
The Authors Guild is showing the usual short-sightedness typical of the media industry, as it will cost their authors sales in what could have been a way to open up the market without the expense of producing Braille books. Amazon’s willingness to throw their customers under the bus shows where their loyalty lies as well. I’ve worked in distribution much of my life, and siding with your vendor against your customer is just bad business.
By the way, you have my permission to read this article to your kids, and anybody else who will listen. Then email your Barnes and Noble receipts to Amazon along with a copy of it.