I largely agree with this logic per my other comment [1], but I think your analogy leaves out an important element (as does mine!), which is that the converted version only lives within Amazon's platform; it's not like Amazon is licensing you a tool that you can apply to anything and happen to use on an Amazon-published work.

So that makes it more like a derivative work Amazon is distributing than a client-side format shift.

So then, let me tweak your analogy a bit. Let's say a studio sells copies of a movie to theaters. They sell the color version and the B/W version, and different rooms/times might have one or the other. The theater sells out all the tickets for the B/W version, but can't any sell tickets for the color version.

Thinking quick, the theater management decides to sell tickets to a color showing as a B/W showing, and when patrons come in, they put some layer over the screen so it looks B/W.

In that case, I could kind of see how that would violate the copyright/license agreement of the studio -- you're selling showings of the B/W version you didn't purchase. [2]

Your scenario would be more like a customer coming in with filtering glasses that make it look like the B/W version to that customer only, in which case, yes, it would be harder to make the case that it was copyright infringement.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20800777

[2] And yes, in practice, the studio wouldn't turn down the money, but let's say they're stubborn about it for some reason.

> black-and-white monitors

Don't know. But is it similar to DeCSS technology and the MPAA.

B&W Monitors could be argued to have multiple purposes, a side-effect is showing copyrighted images.

I'm not fully informed as to what Amazon is doing, but if their technology is being applied specifically to create digital text versions of Audio Books, then it could be argued in a similar vein as DeCSS, which was argued to be necessary to provide "backups" of physical media.

It could also be argued that Amazon is used legal maneuvering for a future showdown in which they can argue the effort to create digital text books is minuscule and thus drive the market price down

Again, IANAL.

I love this example. I can understand why the audio version isn't included for free with the text version: the voice artist had to work 40~50 hours to create it, akin to the coloring artist in your example. But the reverse doesn't make sense. When I buy an audio book, I'm already paying both for the contents and for the execution: surely the contents were already paid for.