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Amazon.com is to allow publishers the option of turning off its controversial text-to-speech feature available on Kindle 2. The experimental feature had led to audio book publishers complaining that it infringed their audio rights.
In a statement issued Friday, Amazon.com said: "We strongly believe many rightsholders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver's seat. Therefore, we are modifying our systems so that rightsholders can decide on a title by title basis whether they want text-to-speech enabled or disabled for any particular title."
Nevertheless Amazon.com maintained that the feature was "legal": "no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given."
It added: "With this new level of control, publishers and authors will be able to decide for themselves whether it is in their commercial interests to leave text-to-speech enabled. We believe many will decide that it is."