The Kindle Swindle?

Re:The Kindle Swindle? by RK on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @04:46AM (#494181)

For the record: no, the Authors Guild does not expect royalties from anybody doing non-commercial performances of "Goodnight Moon." If parents want to send their children off to bed with the voice of Kindle 2, however, it’s another matter.

I really don't follow his logic here. I think the fundamental question is "what is a performance?". I just find it hard to see that kindle reading = voice actor reading. Why go to the concert, when you've got a player piano? Is that really a threat?

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Re:The Kindle Swindle? by rationalbeaver on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @09:46AM (#494396)

It seems that Amazon would agree with that assessment, since they own Audible.com, the web's biggest audio book seller. One would imagine that if they thought the kindle's reading feature would infringe upon/destroy the audio book business, they wouldn't have given it the green light.

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Re:The Kindle Swindle? by sethbc on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @12:13PM (#494582)

Agreed. In fact, Amazon engineered the Kindle to play Audible books as well. And they didn't eliminate this functionality when they added the ability to 'read' the books aloud.

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Re:The Kindle Swindle? by asciilifeform on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @07:58AM (#494304)

Do read about what the music industry of the early 1900s had to say about the player piano:

http://www.eetimes.com/disruption/essays/vonlohmann.jhtml

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Re:The Kindle Swindle? by unalone on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @11:03AM (#494493)

He sounds like somebody who doesn't fundamentally understand the nature of audio reading. He's envisioning something more threatening to audio readers than actually exist today.

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