[Missouri-l] FW: [leadership] ACB's Opinion Editorial RE Author's Guild

[Peter Altschul]

-----Original Message-----
From: Marlaina Lieberg [mailto:1guidedog at gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009 11:56 AM
To: leadership at acb.org
Subject: [leadership] ACB's Opinion Editorial RE Author's Guild

President Pomerantz requests aI post the following, which I distributed over

the weekend to over 25 newspapers nationwide:

The Kindle 2 from Amazon.com May lose its voice!



The American Council of the Blind (ACB), this nation's largest consumer 
organization of blind and visually impaired persons with over 70 affiliates 
across the United States, is deeply concerned about a recent development 
regarding Amazon's new Kindle 2 Book Reader.  On February 9, 2009, Amazon, 
Inc., released a new version of its popular

e-book reader, the Kindle 2, which included text-to-speech technology.  This

technology,

used by people who are blind or have print disabilities, "reads aloud" text

using synthetic speech.  The American Council of the Blind and other 
organizations were encouraged by this development, since we have long 
advocated that manufacturers of mainstream products make their devices fully

accessible to all Americans. Sadly however, shortly after the Kindle 2's 
release, the Authors Guild, the largest national organization representing 
the interests of writers, protested Amazon's deployment of text-to-speech on

the Kindle 2.  They view the feature as a potential threat to the audio book

market, arguing that the automated reading aloud of a book is a copyright 
infringement unless the copyright holder has specifically granted permission

for the book to be read aloud.



After an Op-Ed piece by Roy Blount, Jr., president of the Authors Guild, 
appeared in the New York times on February 24 media attention on this issue 
was escalated.  In response to increasing pressure from authors and 
publishers, Amazon announced on February 27th that it would modify its 
system so that authors and publishers could turn off text-to-speech on a 
title-by-title basis.  The removal of text-to-speech

>From the Kindle 2 is unfortunate and counter-productive.  It removes yet one

more mainstream and cost-effective choice from a market which already has 
comparatively very few mainstream choices for access to the printed word.



In response to concerns raised by ACB and other related advocacy 
organizations, Paul Aiken, Executive director of the Author's Guild, 
proposed a separate registration system for people with print disabilities, 
whereby a blind or print-disabled person would register as disabled and 
receive a code that would override the disablement of text-to-speech on the 
Kindle 2.  ACB and a growing coalition of disability groups do not believe 
this offer is fair or reasonable; why must people with disability register 
themselves just to have the right to read.  Mr. Aiken has since responded, 
offering the possibility of making text-to-speech e-books available at an 
additional cost.  Again, the market with substantially fewer choices for 
mainstream access to books is being asked to bare the cost.



A letter from a growing coalition of people with print-reading disabilities 
has been sent to the six publishers who are providing e-books for the Kindle

2, asking each of them to allow their books to be read on the device with 
text-to-speech and explaining that the coalition would engage in a national 
public education campaign in hopes of reversing any decision to disable 
text-to-speech in their Kindle books.  The coalition plans to kick off this 
campaign with a protest in front of the Authors Guild headquarters in

New York City on Tuesday, April 7, from noon until 2:00 p.m.

ACB is working actively on this coalition.  If you or someone you know will 
be affected or you just want to be involved to ensure people with 
print-reading disabilities are not denied yet another choice, you can get 
more information by contacting the American Council of the Blind at (800) 
424-8666 or visit us on the web at acb.org



Mitch Pomerantz, President American Council of the Blind

Mitch.pomerantz at earthlink.net



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