Digital Media

Update at 3:11 p.m. PDT: This story now includes a comment from Consumer Watchdog.

A federal judge has granted authors worldwide four more months to decide whether to participate in a settlement involving Google's online Book Search service.

Absent the ruling, made by Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, authors would have had until May 5 to decide whether to join the settlement or opt out.

But according to a law clerk in Chin's court, as well as one of the lawyers in the case, the deadline to opt out of the settlement is now September 4, 2009, and the final fairness hearing in the case will be held on October 7, in New York.

"We're excited about the proposed settlement agreement regarding Google Book Search," said Gabriel Stricker, a Google spokesperson, in an e-mail to CNET News. "As we've said previously, the settlement is highly detailed, and we want to make sure rightsholders everywhere have enough time to think about it and make sure it's right for them."

In fact, though, Google may not be happy with the outcome, and some suggest that the very fact that the company asked for a delay at all indicated it didn't have much faith in its ability to prevail in the end.

"The four-month extension is a big victory for those who oppose the Google Books settlement," said John Simpson, a consumer advocate with Consumer Watchdog. "It's a clear recognition by the judge that there are problems with the proposed deal. The extension also gives the Justice Department more time to consider the antitrust issues that we and others have raised and discussed with them."

As proposed, the settlement of the case filed by the Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers in 2005, revolves around Google's ability to include content from books online, and in particular "orphan" works that are still under copyright, but are out of print or written by authors who can't be found.

But some parties to the deal are objecting to Google's proposed settlement.

Google had sought an extension to the settlement of 60 days. On Monday, the company's associate general counsel for products and intellectual property wrote in a blog post explaining the request for a 60-day extension that, "The settlement is highly detailed, and we want to make sure rightsholders everywhere have enough time to think about it and make sure it's right for them."

"This is my understanding of how this goes," a source close to the legal matter told CNET News. "(Google, the Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers) blanket the Earth and try to let everybody know about the agreement, and right now (they) believe (they) have blanketed the Earth."

The source also suggested that Google and the plaintiffs have been working on the settlement for years, so whether the outcome is "years plus two months or years plus four months is neither here nor there."

But, the source added, those involved in promoting the book service are eager to see it get off the ground and that the four-month extension just means delaying that for two months longer."

Federal judge Denny Chin granted this four-month extension to a group of authors involved in a class action against Google over the search giant's Book Search service. Click image to enlarge and read page one of his order.

Chin's ruling Tuesday seemed to be a direct response to a request made last week by seven authors for a full four-month extension due to the proposed settlement's complexity.

"First, two months' time is insufficient to understand the implications of a settlement of this scope," the authors wrote in their request (PDF). "Second, substantial defects in notice of the settlement undermine authors' ability to assess their rights; and third, more time is required simply to understand the complex terms of the agreement."

Chin cited a letter from the authors, as well as a separate letter from a group of academic authors in making his decision.

"Upon consideration of the letters, I will grant approximately a four-month extension," Chin wrote.

In an interview given to Publisher's Weekly, Gail Knight Steinbeck, one of the seven authors who asked for the four-month extension, praised Chin's decision. "We now have (the) time to really sink our teeth into what this agreement will mean," she told the magazine, adding that she felt that the authors now had the time they needed to figure out whether modifications to the settlement will make it suitable, whether to opt out or whether to fight the settlement.

Joanne Zack, an attorney for the author sub-class and the Authors Guild, said she had no comment on the settlement extension.

Supporters of the blind protest the Authors Guild for objecting to the Kindle 2's text-to-speech function.

(Credit: Michael Adolph)

The controversy regarding the text-to-speech function offered by Amazon.com's Kindle 2 digital book reader appears to be heating up again.

Groups advocating for the blind and reading disabled on Tuesday held a protest at the Manhattan offices of the Authors Guild. The guild was very vocal in opposing the text-to-speech technology in the Kindle. The group, which represents 4,000 authors, argued that the Kindle infringes on copyright and could hurt audio book sales.

The whole debate seemed to be over in February when . The Web's largest retailer said it had decided to enable publishers with the power to disable Kindle's text-to-speech function on a per-title basis.

Text-to-speech enables computers to read text in a lifelike voice.

The protest of 150 and 250 participants, according to reports, was held "in hopes to reverse the Guild's threat to disable text-to-speech from e-books for the Kindle 2," according to a statement from the National Federation of the Blind (NFB).

Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, said his organization came up with a plan that would have given the blind and visually impaired access to the Kindle's voice function regardless of whether publishers chose to disable the technology.

"Authors want everyone to read their books," Aiken said. "We've been strongly supportive of the rights of the blind and disabled to obtain books...We know how to balance the interests, to make sure there is special access to books for people who need it but still protect markets that authors depend on. Audio-books is one of those markets."

The NFB rejected the guild's proposal calling it "burdensome" for the blind to prove their disability or "pay extra for the text-to-speech version."

Update 2:49 p.m. PST: to include comment from Amazon.

Paul Aiken and the Authors Guild aren't gloating.

The executive director of the 9,000-member guild isn't taking all or even most of the credit for Amazon's abrupt about-face on Friday. The retailer announced that it would allow publishers to disable the Kindle 2's text-to-speech feature on any titles of their choosing.

He says while Authors Guild managers were "vocal" with their objections to the Kindle's speech technology, including publishing an op-ed piece in The New York Times, much more powerful entities were leaning on Amazon to make changes: large book publishers.

There was one more reason Amazon was prompted to make changes, according to Aiken.

"Amazon realized the magnitude of the contractual problem," Aiken said Monday morning. "Many of the author's publishing contracts give publishers the right to publish e-books, but only without enhancing audio. A reasonable reading of those contracts shows that publishers didn't have the authority to sell e-books for use in a Kindle device with audio enhancement."

An Amazon spokesman denied being pushed into Friday's decision. As for whether contractual issues played a part, the spokesman repeated what the company said Friday: "Kindle 2's experimental text-to-speech feature is legal."

Aiken began criticizing Amazon soon after the Kindle 2's debut last month. He argued that the retailer was violating the author's copyright and was cutting them out of a potentially new and lucrative market.

Jeff Bezos and staff should have seen the text-to-speech controversy coming.

(Credit: David Carnoy/CBS Interactive)

Amazon chose to keep secret from much of the publishing sector the text-to-speech feature built into the Kindle 2.

Instead, Amazon sprung the feature on publishers and the retailer is now taking public-relations hits that it might have avoided if it hadn't been so tight lipped.

Following the debut of the Kindle 2, the 9,000-member Authors Guild claimed text-to-speech created a derivative work and violated copyright. Paul Aiken, the guild's executive director said many publishers were also angered over the speech function, adding that Amazon never consulted beforehand with either of those groups. Amazon responded Friday by handing publishers the ability to disable the text-to-speech feature on any title they choose.

Amazon's response has disappointed some customers, who are left with the impression that the retailer is unwilling to go to bat for them.

This is exactly the kind of public relations blunder that Amazon can ill afford as it attempts to breathe life into the digital-book market. In this endeavor, who can argue that Amazon isn't off to a great start?

The Kindle is a hit. The e-reader has been blessed by the doyenne of publishing herself: Oprah. A Citigroup analyst recently estimated that Amazon sold 500,000 units last year. He also predicted that the Kindle would generate $1.2 billion by 2010. That number didn't include book sales.

Amazon might have avoided the controversy, had the company enlisted the counsel from important constituents in the publishing industry before launch. This way they could have a) learned about the objections quietly; b) done any haggling there and maybe come to a financial arrangement; c) scrapped the whole idea of text-to-speech if there was too much push back.

Hindsight is 20/20, sure. It's easy to tweak Amazon for failing to see the problem coming. But how are execs handling the controversy now?

"Kindle 2's experimental text-to-speech feature is legal," Amazon said in a press release issued on Friday, announcing the company would give publishers the option of disabling text-to-speech on any title. "No copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given."

If Amazon believes those things, some will argue (certainly those in the anticopyright crowd) that the company should take a stand--if not for its own sake than on behalf of customers.

Fighting a potentially expensive and prolonged legal battle with suppliers is a lot to ask of Amazon or any other company. Perhaps if text-to-speech were a vital or much-loved feature, then Amazon would be more apt to hold the line. But it's not.

Text-to-speech isn't going to threaten audio books for a long time. That's not my opinion. That's the opinion of Andy Aaron, an IBM expert on text-to-speech and a self described "booster" of the technology.

"I don't think at this point, or for the foreseeable future, (text-to-speech) is going to compete meaningfully with a professional book reader," Aaron said last week. "Am I going to sit down and put my feet up and listen to text-to-speech read 'War And Peace' or 'Harry Potter' for six to eight hours? For someone who has the choice, I think they would rather get an audio book."

For Amazon to be taking heat over this issue is silly. There's not that much in it for the company. Next time, they should take a few more risks with media leaks and get some guidance.

Apparently, Amazon won't fight the publishing industry on the issue of whether the Kindle 2's text-to-speech function violates copyright.

The retailer, which makes the popular Kindle electronic-book reader, announced late Friday that the company is modifying systems to allow authors and publishers to decide whether to enable Kindle's text-to-speech function on a per-title basis.

Amazon began its press release with tough talk. "Kindle 2's experimental text-to-speech feature is legal," Amazon wrote. "No copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given."

But then the company says: "We strongly believe many rights holders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver's seat."

There is no mistaking what happened here. Amazon caved. For Kindle owners interested in the text-to-speech feature, the device just lost value.

The Authors Guild, a trade group representing 9,000 authors, began criticizing Amazon shortly after the Kindle 2 debuted earlier this month. The guild's president, Paul Aiken, told CNET this week that Amazon was taking a hard-line position in discussions between the guild and the company. He also said there was a possibility that the guild could sue over the issue.

"Anytime you have a new means of accessing content," Aiken said, "there's always some sort of aggregator that wants to control it and keep the value for themselves."

Fred von Lohmann, senior attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocate group for the rights of Web users and technology companies, said he was grateful that Amazon went out of its way to make the point that the company didn't believe text-to-speech technology violated copyright.

"Nevertheless, Amazon decided to allow copyright owners to make the decisions themselves whether to use the feature," von Lohmann said. "They are entitled to do that. The issue of text-to-speech will have to wait for another innovator."

One point that von Lohmann noted was that there are plenty of PCs that offer text-to-speech, and the Authors Guild hasn't objected to those. "Maybe Apple should be looking over their shoulder," he said.

It's easy to understand why Amazon may have back-pedaled. Even the staunchest supporters of text-to-speech say that it won't replace audio books any time soon. Computers can sound like humans but they can't insert emphasis or offer much of a dramatic rendering because they don't yet understand what they're reading--and likely won't for a very long time, say the experts.

Executives at the Authors Guild say the text-to-speech feature in Amazon's Kindle 2 could hurt sales of audio books. Not all of the experts agree, including the guild's.

Andy Aaron, an IBM text-to-speech expert, says synthetic voices don't know when to add emphasis or inflection when reading.

(Credit: Andy Aaron)

Andy Aaron, an expert on text-to-speech technology, recently commented in an interview about how much such systems have advanced. In an op-ed piece published Tuesday in the The New York Times titled "The Kindle Swindle?" Roy Blount Jr., president of the Authors Guild, used Aaron's quotes to support his argument that the Kindle's voice feature could threaten the future of audio books.

But when asked to elaborate, Aaron told CNET News on Wednesday that the audio-book market has little to fear from "synthetic voices."

"I'm a big believer in (text-to-speech) and a booster of it," said Aaron, who is with IBM's Watson Research Center. "But I don't think at this point, or for the foreseeable future, it's going to compete meaningfully with a professional book reader...Am I going to sit down and put my feet up and listen to text-to-speech read 'War And Peace' or Harry Potter for six to eight hours? For someone who has the choice, I think they would rather get an audio book."

Amazon appears headed towards a showdown with the Authors Guild over text-to-speech technology. This enables computers to read text in a lifelike voice. Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, a trade group representing 9,000 authors, argues that Amazon isn't compensating authors for Kindle's text-to-speech feature. He claims authors' copyrights are being violated.

Amazon representatives did not respond to a request for comment.

Aiken generated a lot of attention when he first raised concerns about the Kindle following the debut earlier this month of the e-book reader. On Wednesday, Aiken said Amazon never informed the guild--or book publishers for that matter--of the retailer's plan to include the feature.

In the weeks since the Kindle debut, the guild has had discussions with Amazon and the online retailer is taking a "hard-line position," Aiken said. All this doesn't bode well for finding an amicable resolution.

Aiken wouldn't say what the guild's plans are but confirmed that guild administrators won't rule out filing a lawsuit.

"Anytime you have a new means of accessing content," said Aiken, "there's always some sort of aggregator that wants to control it and keep the value for themselves."

As for Aaron's assertions that text-to-speech systems won't threaten audio books for a long time, Aiken says nobody knows the future.

"Things move quickly," Aiken said. "I think the technology has made a generational leap in just the last few years."

To prove the point, the guild has posted demonstrations of text-to-speech technologies offered by Apple four years ago (the video posted above). The voice is monotone and unintelligible in places. It sounds like it was lifted from a bad sci-fi film.

The next clip is a recording of Kindle's text-to-speech offering. (At right, I've included a humorous demonstration of Kindle text-to-speech function posted to YouTube by a user called Kindlejunkie). The differences are sharp. The Kindle's voice pronounces words clearly and sounds far more lifelike. There is however, no inflection or emphasis. The thing drones on.

It's not that the technology can't create dramatic effects. Aaron says the technology has advanced to a point where synthetic voices can be made to sound happy or apologetic. The major roadblock for these systems, however, is that they don't know when to insert these effects or choose the effect that is most appropriate.

What's missing in computers is the ability to understand what they're reading, said Aaron.

"Even a mediocre human reader is interacting with the text and understands every word that he or she is reading," Aaron said. "Text-to-speech doesn't. It can be really good. It can be really smooth. It can sound very lifelike. But it doesn't understand what it's reading. Do you want to listen to a reader that doesn't understand what they're reading?"

The obvious question here is if text-to-speech systems can read something with a specific emotional tone, couldn't a publisher go into a digital book and mark where they want to insert a specific effect?

They could, says Aaron, but that would take an enormous of amount of time and expense. At that point it's easier to hire a human reader and create an audio book.

Here's a little bit about how they create a voice for text-to-speech. First, a professional reader is hired to read text created for its "phonemic diversity." The sentences are designed to cover a wide range of word sounds. The process takes more than 60 hours to complete, Aaron said.

Algorithms are used to help figure out how to manipulate the sounds correctly.

Aiken concedes that text-to-speech systems can't provide many of the dramatic effects that a human can. But he does think they're good enough to erode sales of audio books.

One thing to remember is that the potential to compete with audio books is only one part of the guild's complaint. Aiken argues that Kindle's voice feature should be considered a separate derivative and authors should share in its revenues.

What's for certain is guild managers don't believe Amazon should give text-to-speech away for free just to help market Kindles.

"This should be considered a legitimate new market for publishers and authors," Aiken said. "It's a technology that should be used for incremental revenue. With all the squeezing that's going on in publishing, you just can't let this one go."

Authors and publishers of tens of thousands of out-of-print books have submitted claims for compensation from Google Book Search as called for in a settlement agreement to a copyright lawsuit, a lawyer in the case said on Wednesday.

Under a $125 million settlement Google reached in October with book authors and publishers who sued over the company's book-scanning project, the search giant is required to provide notice to authors, publishers, and their heirs and successors that they may be eligible for payment.

The notice is being published in 218 countries and 72 languages, according to a statement from Boni & Zack, a Philadelphia-area law firm that represented the Authors Guild in the lawsuit.

Authors and others are submitting claims on a special Web site that went live January 5, attorney Michael Boni said in an interview. Under the settlement terms, copyright holders will receive $60 per scanned book and 63 percent of ad revenue.

"The notice program is succeeding and notice has already gone out to most of the class members around the world," Boni said. "There is still some more notice to be provided, but we are on track and we are pleased."

Google representatives did not immediately respond to questions via e-mail and telephone.

Google is digitizing the works from many major libraries, including the New York Public Library and the libraries at Stanford and Harvard universities, and is making those texts searchable on pages with advertisements.

The Authors Guild, which represents more than 8,000 authors, sued Google in September 2005, alleging that the company's digitizing initiative amounted to "massive" copyright infringement.

Update at 5:30 p.m. PST: Quotes added from copyright advocate Ben Sheffner.

Was your mother a lawbreaker when she read you The Little Prince or Green Eggs and Ham?

That's the question raised Tuesday by the Authors Guild, an advocacy group for writers. Paul Aitken, the group's executive director objects to the text-to-speech feature on Amazon's Kindle 2 digital-book reader. Aitken told The Wall Street Journal: "They don't have the right to read a book out loud. That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law."

Wow. If a computer can't lawfully read a book out loud, do human beings have the right? Amazon and Aitken could not be reached for comment.

Well, mothers of America, never fear. You most certainly do have the right to privately perform copyright work, says Ben Sheffner, a copyright attorney. Sheffner, a well-known copyright advocate, says the issue of whether Amazon's Kindle infringes on intellectual property is not as cut and dry.

Amazon's technology enables a computer voice to read text aloud to owners of the Kindle 2, the next-gen version of reader.

Sheffner said it's unclear whether the text-to-speech feature could be considered a public performance. Under copyright law, if someone profits from, say, a public reading of a copyright work without authorization, they are breaking the law. Someone could argue, said Sheffner, that the Kindle's speech feature is a public performance because it enables scores of people to receive audio of a book. Sheffner added that the counter argument would be that the feature is only enabling lots of different private--and therefore legal--performances.

Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School, said he doesn't see how the speech feature violates copyright law if no recorded copy of the book is created. Book publishers often license audio books separately than the text versions.

"The only right really that might be implicated is the so-called public performance," Zittrain said. "But what I want the thing to do is to read to me in the car. I don't see a copy being made so I don't see how this can be Amazon's problem."

The debate could be academic. If the book publishers don't like the feature, they can refuse to renew their licenses with Amazon in the future. And my colleague Ina Fried raised another point. Why would Kindle owners choose a computer voice when they can hear a recording of the author or a professional actor reading the book?