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Comment by deogeo | Hacker News Reader

But allowing a user to convert between text and speech on their own device isn't selling the converted version.

And if this conversion is done not locally, but via SaaS, that's just an implementation detail. I believe there's precedent for this (which I cannot find at the moment), but if this was not the case, then you could not touch any document you did not have copyright on using e.g. Google Docs.

Edit: Found the precedent where time-shifting (i.e. video recording) was found to be non-infringing, regardless of if it's done locally or remotely [1].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon_Network,_LP_v._CSC_Hol....

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This isn’t the user doing the conversion, it’s an Amazon product doing it. You say it’s “just” an implementation detail, but the distinction of how it’s being generated matters.

If I add notes to a PDF using Adobe Acrobat, did I add the notes, or did an Adobe product do it? What if I do it with Google Docs, in the cloud? Then it's not even on my machine.

You are conflating agency of action with the means of action.

This is a distinction I don't understand.

If I run a local speech-to-text client on my computer for my own use, that's pretty established fair use.

If I run the same software on a Raspberry Pi and transmit the results over my LAN for my own use, I assume that's also fair use.

If I provision an AWS VM and run the same software there, and then transmit the results back to my device for my own use, is that fair use?

If I get my best friend to provision the AWS VM and run the same software there, and then transmit the results back to my device for my own use, is that fair use?

If Amazon provisions the AWS VM for me, and runs the same software there, and then transmits the results back to my device for my own use, is that fair use?

People are drawing a line here that I genuinely don't see. The whole thing feels incredibly arbitrary to me. The agency of action is that the user is asking a computer to perform a task. The means of action is a piece of software running on a computer, computing results on the fly.

>If Amazon provisions the AWS VM for me, and runs the same software there, and then transmits the results back to my device for my own use, is that fair use?

Did Amazon do it out of their own volition, or did you instruct them to do it? Also what you're considering fair use, may or may not be fair use. Fair use is a specific exemption made in a specific context. You cannot reapply that exemption in an SaaS context and call it equivalent. You'll have to first demonstrate the legal basis for your claim that the two contexts are equivalent.

Also I do recognize that all of us here are non-experts giving our two cents, so any disagreement we have is TBH inconsequential to what the law actually says and how its actually interpreted! :)

> Did Amazon do it out of their own volition, or did you instruct them to do it?

By purchasing the work through Amazon's store, and clicking the "enable speech-to-text", he instructed Amazon to do it. I should mention this looks like an extremely vague distinction, and it's not even mutually exclusive. Amazon provides a service of its own volition, and he took advantage of that service.

EULAs and those kinds of agreements have their own legal problems with how they can be enforced, so its best not to complicate things here !

>I should mention this looks like an extremely vague distinction, and it's not even mutually exclusive.

I don't agree with your opinion that its vague.

> Amazon provides a service of its own volition, and he took advantage of that service.

If the action that Amazon took could be proven to be "just as easily" done by the end user, then perhaps Amazons acting on behalf of the end user could be considered equivalent to the end user themselves performing that action.

For e.g. If these is a fair use exemption for making a copy of a CD for a personal backup, then if I told my neighbors kid to do it for me, I think it could be considered equivalent as me doing it myself. Copying a CD is at present, ubiquitous enough, that assisting someone is probably on safe legal ground.

> EULAs and those kinds of agreements

I'm not talking about any EULAs - I'm trying to say that clicking the "speech-to-text" button is no different than opening a file in notepad, changing a few lines, then clicking save - you're instructing a program to do something. Would you say that notepad.exe/Microsoft altered the file "of it's own volition"?

I already addressed this in the previous comment. You might have missed it.

>> Amazon provides a service of its own volition, and he took advantage of that service.

>If the action that Amazon took could be proven to be "just as easily" done by the end user, then perhaps Amazons acting on behalf of the end user could be considered equivalent to the end user themselves performing that action.

>For e.g. If these is a fair use exemption for making a copy of a CD for a personal backup, then if I told my neighbors kid to do it for me, I think it could be considered equivalent as me doing it myself. Copying a CD is at present, ubiquitous enough, that assisting someone is probably on safe legal ground.

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