Tuesday, August 27, 2019
The Future Hurts
Who would think that speech to text software would run afoul of copyright law? This is a legal battle Amazon is facing. Its new Captions feature translates audio to text and lets readers follow the written word while hearing it. The software is intended for students in public school settings. Publishers will have none of it. They are saying in legal filings that it transgresses the distinction between audio and text, and Amazon's approach is giving away textual copies of books. What's to prevent one from listening to War and Peace then filing it away on a Kindle without paying for it? Or worse yet, selling a printed copy? This not the first time the publishing industry has defied the future. Amazon unveiled text to speech some years ago that publishers nixed because it crossed the bright line between audio and print. There are bets that Captions won't last either.
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