Read It Aloud and Weep: Controversy Surrounds Kindle Text-To-Speech (2009)

Code's potential power expands over time, and that will always be a source of friction, for a whole class of similar problems.

Building software that can scan and elegantly read any text is somewhat complex now, but it's not inconceivable that a few years down the line it becomes as simple as "import simonprebble" or "import scottbrick".

The consequence is that the lucrative audiobook industry becomes obsolete overnight.

But preventing it, like banning crypto, or DVD burning, means banning people from jotting down a few magic phrases. It's weird either as a really odd overreach for government, or just obviously unenforceable.

It seems a fair legal principle that simple helpful things anyone can do in the privacy of their own home should generally not be illegal.

On the other hand, that set of things simple code can do, thus sectors code threatens, expands every year. These become awfully high minded principles for the people whose livelihood are threatened. So there's reason to feel at least a little conflicted.

Shouldn't text-to-speech fall under an accessibility feature? Computers have had the ability to do text to speech for decades. The quality of the computer voice should not be an issue unless the voice is designed to mimic a specific human voice. The argument that voices are no longer robotic falls short, as there is no, "this sucks" legal requirement for accessibility features.

I believe I have made a similar argument about hearing aids here. If a hearing aid alters/filters sound and "rebroadcasts" it so that the person can hear you'd have to be spawn of the devil to argue that this constitutes copyright infringement.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Ahhh, another one from the Authors Guild