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Roy Blount Jr, president of the Authors Guild in the US, has explained the guild's opposition to the Kindle 2's text-to-speech function.
Writing in the New York Times, Blount said "Kindle 2 can read books aloud. And Kindle 2 is not paying anyone for audio rights. . .
"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."
He continued, "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."
Blount also pointed out the potential competition between automated voices and recorded audiobooks: "That sort of technology is improving all the time . . . You may be thinking that no automated read-aloud function can compete with the dulcet resonance of Jim Dale reading Harry Potter . . . But the voices of Kindle 2 are quite listenable. . .
"People who want to keep on doing creative things for a living must be duly vigilant about any new means of transmitting their work."