The Authors Guild recently attracted headlines for the extremely dubious claim that the Kindle 2′s text-to-speech feature (it will read books for you in a computer voice) violated copyright. The group’s executive director, Roy Blount Jr., apparently didn’t get enough abuse the first time around, because he went and penned an OpEd for the NY Times on the subject.

After oddly claiming that his dad’s job killed him prematurely, Blount makes the simplistic case against nonhuman ebook readers:

But there’s another thing about Kindle 2 — its heavily marketed text-to-speech function. Kindle 2 can read books aloud. And Kindle 2 is not paying anyone for audio rights.

True, you can already get software that will read aloud whatever is on your computer. But Kindle 2 is being sold specifically as a new, improved, multimedia version of books — every title is an e-book and an audio book rolled into one. And whereas e-books have yet to win mainstream enthusiasm, audio books are a billion-dollar market, and growing. Audio rights are not generally packaged with e-book rights. They are more valuable than e-book rights. Income from audio books helps not inconsiderably to keep authors, and publishers, afloat.

There it is. Authors get money audio rights, therefore no one has the right to jeopardize them. Blount also tries to dispel the main criticisms of his argument and fails magnificently:

What the guild is asserting is that authors have a right to a fair share of the value that audio adds to Kindle 2’s version of books. For this, the guild is being assailed. On the National Federation of the Blind’s Web site, the guild is accused of arguing that it is illegal for blind people to use “readers, either human or machine, to access books that are not available in alternative formats like Braille or audio.”

In fact, publishers, authors and American copyright laws have long provided for free audio availability to the blind and the guild is all for technologies that expand that availability. (The federation, though, points out that blind readers can’t independently use the Kindle 2’s visual, on-screen controls.) But that doesn’t mean Amazon should be able, without copyright-holders’ participation, to pass that service on to everyone.

The guild is also accused of wanting to profiteer off family bedtime rituals. A lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation sarcastically warned that “parents everywhere should be on the lookout for legal papers haling them into court for reading to their kids.”

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.

Okay, Blount, what if parents want to send their child off to bed with a nanny, whose melodious vocal performance of an author’s work sends the next generation into rapturous sleep? Or what if I hire an Indian to read my children a bedtime story over the phone? Or what if the babysitter (who is being paid) reads the kids a tale before they nod off?

Aren’t those cases just as bad? Blount claims that the Kindle 2 is exceptional because the computer voice is impressively good and the feature is well advertised. But what if my nanny knows she’s got reading pipes and advertises them as part of her feature set?

What about my wife, the thieving audio performer? She is an elementary school teacher and reads stories to her class on a daily basis, and she is compensated for this work. If she reads to them in the after-school program, she’s making $40 an hour! Clearly, she’s an audio rights pirate, right Blount?

I can only hope that Blount’s NYT piece proves to be as bad an idea as the guild’s anti-Kindle crusade.

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