This that and the other thing...

[shadowkat]

1. Vaccines

Got the COVID vaccine after work. The New York Governor made it possible for everyone between the ages of 6-110 to take it for an expandable 30 day period, under an emergency order.

I scheduled it while at work for around 4:40pm, and ended up getting there early - so go it around 4:30pm. I got it today, in case there are any major side-effects. That way I have the weekend to get past them, not that I've ever had any outside of a sore arm. Mother hasn't had any side-effects either. The only ones who have in my immediate family are my brother and sister-in-law, who have the worst immune systems on the planet. Both get sick at the drop of a hat. It's insane.

This is my ....sixth shot, and I've yet to have any side-effects. Always worried that I might get them - and the worst I've had to date is a sore shoulder/arm. I had the original vaccine in 2021, then a booster each year thereafter. I almost had to skip this year - they wouldn't give it to me in January, because I'd already had it in 2024. I've always had the Pfizer. (Mainly because I've never had any side effects with it, and folks who've gotten the Moderna - have had side effects.)

I waited a while to get it - because I had COVID in June, and you need to wait about 90 days before getting the shot. COVID makes you immune for 90 days. I've had COVID about three times that I'm aware of? 2022, 2024, and 2025. Also possibly had it in November of 2019 - but thought it was something else. While the vaccine doesn't prevent COVID, it does lessen the effects of COVID. I've never had a severe case of COVID. It's just a respiratory flu - that's over in five days, with a lingering dry cough, brain fog and shortness of breath. Other's have had it far worse.

No, I didn't get either the Flu shot or the Shingles at the same time. My primary care begged me not to. I'm immune-compromised, so it's not a good idea. I tried to tell her that everybody else that I know of - has, but she was adamant. I could, I suppose, ignore her and do it anyhow - but I was afraid to - best not to take an unnecessary risk.

2. Take a photo of any book with your phone and have it instantly read to you - I keep seeing this weird app advertised on Facebook, in which you can take a photo of literally any book in a library or book store and automatically have it read to you.

Speechify reads books to you

Of course it does it in a monotone - but you can pick any number of digitized voices to do it.

I don't have any issues with having books read to me - my issue is that someone can willy nilly go to a book store or library, scan the book, and have it read to them for free? I don't know, that kind of screams copyright infringement? It's one thing if the writer is getting paid a royalty from the service...but what if they aren't?

3. Traveling Water Color Kit Another thing advertised on FB and Instragram that I'm resisting the urge to purchase: Tobios Travel Watercolor Kit, whomever is marketing this is doing an excellent job. I keep reminding myself - that this is not how I like to paint. I like to do it alone. In my apartment. With a large canvas. And room. Not in miniature. I have shaking hands, and no fine motor coordination - so can't do the miniature work well. I'm not a miniaturist, I tend to work better large? Big woman. Big hands. Big canvas.

But it is lovely for someone who wants a small traveling kit to wander about doing small stuff with?

Don't get it from Amazon - which apparently is selling knock-offs.

4. Shopping Went online shopping - via Talbots and Amazon - and picked up a few things on sale, including pjs, and a shawl.

Also checked out Anne Taylor's LOFT next door to Crazy Workplace, on the other side of Starbucks. The new fall color appears to be a pastel lime green - which is not my color, and brown, lots of brown. I do like the deep rich burgundy, but alas nothing in my size. Anne Taylor slants towards petite and small women, not big and tall women like myself. I'm not big enough for Lane Bryant, but not small enough for Anne Taylor. Talbots works better - but alas, none are nearby. I like Talbots but it didn't have everything I wanted. It had green and black, but not rich burgundy. So, I got a few shirts from Amazon, but it will take forever to get them.

As an aside? For the most part, I hate or dread shopping. But I did find it weirdly comforting doing it online this week. I prefer online than in-store shopping. Sales clerks and other shoppers and the dressing rooms, plus hunting stuff makes me edgy.

I like it displayed. I have no patience for hunting through the racks. I'm not a good bargain shopper. My mother isn't a shopper. The appeal of hunting for things in stores is kind of lost on us? But hunting for things online shopping is fun - even if it's a bit like playing Russian roulette? Since I suck at returning things, and some places don't let you.

Debating buying a pair of Uno Black Sneakers from Amazon. I don't really need them. I have enough shoes. But does one ever really have enough shoes? Ponders.

5. Buffy Revival or Continuation (Because it's not a reboot! Got it?) I keep stumbling upon online fights over whether it's a reboot or a continuation or a revival...which is kind of amusing. Welcome to the Internet - where people fight over semantics incessantly.

Anyhow, the latest: Gellar Reveals more about Buffy's Comeback and Insists its not a Reboot (But it's a lot easier to call it a reboot.)

"In a new interview with Entertainment Tonight, Sarah Michelle Gellar was asked about the Buffy reboot which is under no circumstances to be called a reboot. “There’s so little I can say about what we just shot,” Sarah explains. “I will say that it’s not a reboot. It’s a continuation of a world - the world of Buffy, if that makes sense. It’s picking up 25 years later in a world of Buffy. It’s equal parts incredibly thrilling but also it’s very nerve-wracking. People have been asking for this for so many years but everyone also has an opinion on how it should be done."

“I’m doing it for the fans so I hope that they love it. It was made with a lot of love and a lot of passion and a lot of thought behind it. As an actor, you hope you have projects that resonate and stand the test of time. That’s what’s amazing about it because it’s continually getting rediscovered but it holds up."

The wait might feel like forever, but is officially underway at Hulu, with the pilot episode having wrapped filming. Directed by Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao, the series introduces a new Slayer named Nova, portrayed by Ryan Kiera Armstrong, while Sarah Michelle Gellar returns as Buffy Summers in a recurring role that’s going to be more Giles-like. Set 25 years after the original series, the show brings the Buffyverse into the present day, featuring a fresh cast including Faly Rakotohavana, Ava Jean, Sarah Bock, Daniel Di Tomasso, Jack Cutmore-Scott, and Chase Sui Wonders.

If all things go smoothly and we all pray they do – the Buffy pilot is expected to premiere in 2026, marking the 23rd anniversary of the original series’ finale."


[From what I've read - I don't think much of the original cast will return, outside of maybe one or two, and as either special guest stars or brief cameos...I think it's mainly a continuation of the world, with Gellar more in a Giles' role. The shift is the mentor/watcher will be Buffy herself. Which is also why - I don't think it will do that well or get picked up past one season? Because the fandom fell in love with the characters NOT the world? Joss sucked at world building. Star Trek, it's not. Also what was captivating was the dialogue and banter, the one liners, and the humor - also, sigh, the supporting characters. A good portion of the fandom did not watch for Buffy - they watched for everyone else. I know I did. Buffy did pull me in - but not Gellar, it was the writing, direction, and how Gellar played Buffy against and with the other characters. I've not liked her in anything else. And I didn't like books like Fray which were playing with the world - but didn't have the television characters in it. But hey, I could be VERY wrong about this? Just because it doesn't seem appealing to me...doesn't mean it isn't to other people?]

Comments

[kazzy_cee]

I'll probably watch the Buffy revisited series just to see what they do. I'm not sure how much you can do that hasn't been done before, but it might be interesting. I hope Giles appears...

I hadn't seen that cute watercolour kit. I have a small kit I take out sometimes, but it's a bit bigger than that (and folds up into a case so it won't drip everywhere. I'm assuming you can buy refils for the paints?

[shadowkat]

It comes with the paints - in tubes, not just the ones in the palette? Or the palette is bare and you add the paints. And yep you can buy refills and additional brushes per the site.

I'm taking a wait and see attitude with the Buffy continuation, I don't know what to call it - and neither does anyone else apparently, just that they are adamant it's not a reboot? The difficulty with it - is since Buffy aired, there's been about 100 different versions of that format now. What made it distinctive was the writing and characters, not the world.

[duskpeterson]

"my issue is that someone can willy nilly go to a book store or library, scan the book, and have it read to them for free? I don't know, that kind of screams copyright infringement?"

Text-to-speech engines have been around for decades. They're built into all the major computer operating systems and many word processors; if you check the accessibility section of your computer or smartphone, you can find how to turn on text-to-speech.

Fun fact: Early text-to-speech, Optical Character Recognition, and flatbed scanners were originally developed for the blind. By the Internet era, they were being used by the general population. I suspect, though, that print-disabled people continue be the main audience for text-to-speech. When Voice Dream (a major text-to-speech iOS app) first released its product, it quickly discovered that most of its customers were blind.

[shadowkat]

But don't the blind have to buy the book in a bookstore or the text-to-speech version?

Also this app isn't being advertised for the blind but for the "seeing" public, which I think would cancel the pre-existing loop-hole for the blind. (It's been a long time since I took copyright law - but I vaguely remember that there is a loophole for accessibility - such as providing books on tape for the blind or speech to text, and brail text.)

But if you try to sell the product to those who are not impaired or require the accessibility, and at no cost, that kind of cancels out the loop-hole and is copyright infringement. The loop-hole isn't all inclusive.

[duskpeterson]

TLDR: The legality of personal use of text-to-speech on copyrighted works by non-print-disabled readers - like the legality of fanfic - has yet to be determined by the courts, but there's precedent for declaring it fair use.

"But don't the blind have to buy the book in a bookstore or the text-to-speech version?"

No, thank goodness. This is mainstream computer technology, though it has become more mainstream since I became visually impaired in 2001. It used to be that the easiest way to read what was on the screen (including what was on a scanned PDF file of printed matter) was to buy special software for the disabled. These software programs (one of which is now free) can still be helpful for reading menu items on a computer, but most of that technology has been incorporated into computer accessibility systems (especially by Apple, which pioneered this), making it available for everyone. Many publishers continue to use DRM to try to foil use of text-of-speech (TTS) in ebooks, but the traditional way of converting books to TTS was to scan the printed book (these days, most print-disabled people use a smartphone camera) and convert it through an OCR program into digital text. That method can't be foiled by anti-piracy technology (which is why piracy of books persists, though I will argue below that this particular usage isn't piracy).

On the legal aspects of this: As you say, the US copyright issue for the print disabled is complex, and it changes every three years, as the Librarian of Congress refines the rules. In sum: The Chafee Amendment - the loophole in US copyright law for the blind - covers the action of "authorized entities" such as libraries but is silent on what individuals can do at home. Other copyright rulings cover personal use by the print disabled in the US. A lot is usage is still left up in the air, I think mainly because publishers these days tend to be uninterested in suing print-disabled readers. In fact, hundreds of US publishers donate their ebooks (without restrictions against TTS) to an e-library for the print-disabled, Bookshare. As for unauthorized usage of scanned book pages, Bookshare has had that from the beginning, using the Chafee Amendment as its legal basis for not seeking prior permission from publishers. The most recent court ruling on scanned-book accessibility that I know of, Hachette v. Internet Archive, confirmed that the Internet Archive can continue to make its scanned copyrighted books available to print-disabled readers. The Internet Archive's accessibility of those books includes DAISY (an audiobook format for print-disabled readers that usually makes use of TTS) and a built-in TTS engine for its web reader.

Moving on to personal use of TTS for non-print-disabled readers: I suspect this is like the case of home recording of copyrighted media for personal use. It might seem intuitive that this is illegal activity, but in 1984 the US Supreme Court declared this activity fair use.

(Napster, on the other hand, was declared illegal because of the widespread distribution of files. So just to emphasize: I'm talking about personal usage of TTS by an individual, not distribution of TTS files to a wider audience.)

As far as I can tell, there has been no major US court ruling on the legality of personal usage of TTS to voice copyrighted material. I think this is probably because, until recently, TTS was little used by non-print-disabled readers. But its usage is so long-standing - fifty years - that it's hard to see how the genii could be put back into the bottle; it would be like somebody trying to sue photocopy manufacturers today for copyright infringement.

On the other hand, AI voices are newer (though they've been around for at least a decade now, I think). It may well be that publishers will sue for copyright infringement for the non-print-disabled personal use of AI voicings of copyrighted material. Until the courts rule on this, it's up to individuals to make their own judgment of whether converting copyrighted printed words into audio form for personal, individual use is illegal. My own judgment is it falls under fair use.

[shadowkat]

[ETA: I'm bored at work - and you gave my legal analytical brain a new toy to play with. Hee. Thanks for that.]

Depends?? If the text-to-speech is only being used for the visually impaired - then yes, it falls under fair use. But not if it is being sold/marketed to everyone and used by everybody, unfairly impacting on the copyright holder/owner's ability to sell or make money off of it. (If a book doesn't sell in a bookstore - it is returned to the copyright holder or publisher, and the seller is granted a refund. If you are going around converting all the books to speech for free, and marketing this as the best way to read the books like the FB ad did (it states: "you don't need to buy books any longer, just take a picture of it, converting it to speech and have it read to you at the gym" - that's the actual ad) - and worse selling/promoting a device that states : don't buy books, just convert them to speech on our free app. Then yes, that is a violation of copyright law and it is illegal. Why? Because if the book seller can't sell the book, the author/publisher can't pay anyone who prints/publishes/digitizes it, and the author doesn't get paid, so why write a book? People don't tend to write books for free, it's a lot of work and costs a lot to publish and market them.

The general rule on fair use - "is does it unfairly "impact" the copyright owner/holder's ability to commercially market and sell their product and make money off of it?"

Of course, in regard to copyright and intellectual property law - it is only as effective as the owner's ability to pro-actively protect their rights. (Which means suing the person who infringes on them, in order to protect it, which various folks do from time to time. Of course, it’s not automatic and often depends on whose content you decide to play with – if it’s someone like Nora Roberts, GRR Martin, JK Rowling, or Stephen King – you will be chewed up and spit out, if it’s some unknown struggling indie writer? Shame on you but it’s unlikely they can afford to spank you and don’t have the financial banking – copyright law like all things tends to protect those who can afford to sue people.) As we speak there’s two cases against AI firms regarding utilizing author content without permission, the first is Author’s Guild vs. OpenAI and Microsoft – which was filed in 2023 (by GRR Martin, John Grisham, et al via their publishers), and the second which was settled in 2025 in the favor of the plaintiff. Anthropic agreed to a 1.5 Billion in settlement.)

However, do not fall into the trap of thinking until a court rules on this - you can do whatever you want with copyright. Bad idea. That type of thinking cost Kinko's $1.9 million in the 1990s. It also cost the NY Times quite a pretty penny. And it cost Antropic around 1.5 Billion. There was one idiot who decided to plagarize Nora Roberts - and a fan caught them, not Roberts - and they got sued. A fan decided to do their own encyclopedic database of Harry Potter characters and the world, creating new ones, and famously got themselves sued by JK Rowling. And there's a host of writers who have successfully sued fanfic writers.

>>But its usage is so long-standing - fifty years - that it's hard to see how the genii could be put back into the bottle; it would be like somebody trying to sue photocopy manufacturers today for copyright infringement.<<<

The landmark lawsuit regarding copyright infringement for photocopying books was Basic Books, Inc. v. Kinko's Graphics Corp. in 1991. Several major publishers sued the copy shop company Kinko's (now FedEx Office) for reproducing excerpts from books and selling them to college students in "course packets" without permission or payment. A federal judge in New York ruled against Kinko's, finding their activities did not qualify as fair use. The court emphasized that Kinko's was a commercial entity producing the course packets for profit, and that the copying was not transformative and harmed the market for the original books. Kinko's was ordered to pay damages and attorneys' fees, ultimately paying nearly $1.9 million to the publishers. Following the decision, Kinko's ended its course packet service. [So, no, you can’t go to a copy shop and mass copy a bunch of published books without it costing you quite a lot of money. And under copyright law - there really isn't a statute of limitations for most of it. Just for how long the person holds the copyright.]

When a book is published - the copyright holder is asked if they want to make the book accessible to the visually impaired? If it is digitized, they are asked if they want to protect it, or make it accessible to other formats and digital download. [Note - it is fair use to make it accessible to the visually impaired, but not necessarily to make it free for them to own and the case you cited doesn't state that - the case you cited was for Betamax and regarding a time-shift in taping, basically it allows people to tape television shows for later viewing but not to distribute, and has since been restricted by other cases. That case is also notably for "television" taping for later viewing, and doesn't unfairly impact on distribution of DVD or Tape content, which has extras, and the distributor still can make money off of it - since it's not widely distributed. It's not quite the same thing as going into a book store and buying a book or down loading an audio book. That said, again it depends? If text-to-speech threatened to replace books or took over, and made it so no one bought the actual books or only a few people did - than bye bye text to speech. The test is does it unfairly infringe on the copyrighted property? Is the person stealing the property without paying for it? Or merely borrowing for a brief time? And can they redistribute it? Same test applies to digitization and illegal downloading of content.]

Usually, the text-to-speech can only access those works that have previously granted permission for accessible to the vision impaired. It’s not been a problem yet – since only the visually impaired has utilized it (which isn't enough of the population to unfairly infringe upon commercial use - keep in mind, no one sues until their ability to make money off of their property is infringed upon, otherwise they don't tend to care), and the voice utilized by text-to-speech isn’t appealing enough to the non-visually impaired reader. (They sound electronic and are in a monotone.)

Now, however, AI is cloning voices of famous folks for the services – resulting in a different type of lawsuit – you can’t clone the voice of a person without their permission. It’s an infringement of the right of publicity - Paul Lehrman and Linnea Sage vs. Lovo: This lawsuit, filed in 2024, involves voice-over artists who allege an AI company, Lovo, used their voices, acquired under the false pretense of internal research, to create voice clones and market them on a text-to-speech platform. The artists discovered their voices were used in Lovo's subscription service and marketing, leading to claims of right of publicity and false advertising. So there are cases against Text-to-Speech but mainly via voice actors. I’m not sure if you are aware of this? But vocal acting is a huge industry – and a lot of out of work actors have become voice actors. It’s hard work – and strenuous. Not everyone can pull it off. And the going rate for vocal acting can be quite lucrative. It can cost a writer upwards of $10,000 to hire vocal talent to read their novels for audible and other audible book distributors.

As long as “text-to-speech” doesn’t unfairly impact booksellers ability to sell books or publishers ability to sell distribution rights or authors ability to collect royalties for all of the above – then yes, it’s fair use. But the moment it starts to infringe on that – ability to make a living off of selling one’s book – then someone will sue, and well see the Kinko’s case?

It won’t adversely effect you, since you are vision impaired, and clearly fall within the fair use loophole. It is fair use - if you are visually impaired. But someone who isn’t vision impaired, and can read it without any issues (besides needing reading glasses), and usually buys their books on audible to listen to – starts visiting book stores to scan for free listening (because its free) and Speechify starts advertising to that group of people on social media outlets (like Facebook), then that is a violation of copyright and is definitely not fair use. It would fall under the Kinko’s case – and much like Kinkos course copying industry, is a violation of copyright, and infringes on the book sellers ability to sell it. Right now, it’s not a big issue – since the voices are monotones, it’s just voice actors actively suing them. But, the moment it becomes one, and someone like GRR Martin or a Barnes & Noble picks up on people recording books instead of buying them in droves – someone will shut it down, much like they shut down Kinkos.

[duskpeterson]

Oo, this is such a fun thread. I hope you agree; I gather from your posts that you're not as enthralled with debates as I am. So if this conversation becomes too much for you, do feel free to drop it like a hot potato.

In the meantime, let me see whether I can properly tackle your excellent post.

First of all, I'm aware of most of the cases you cite; in fact, I'm a potential claimant in the Anthropic case. So it's as a professional author that I say: I don't consider the use of text-to-speech by non-print-disabled readers to be a violation of copyright, under the circumstances I have described.

These are the circumstances I have been trying to describe: The writing is obtained legally . . . so no copying an entire book in a bookstore without buying the book. (Jeez, that app sounds like a lawsuit in the making.) The TTS is being used for noncommercial, personal uses. There is no license or DRM to prevent the use of TTS on the book. The TTS software itself is legally obtained - say, it's part of the operating system of the smartphone you bought. And finally, there is no distribution of a file or other product, which makes it unlike the examples of AI training, fanworks, and Kinko's course copies.

(Incidentally, note that Kinko's was sued in that court case, instead of IBM. The technology of photocopying wasn't a threat per se to publishers, because photocopying can be used for perfectly legal purposes; publishers use photocopying themselves, all the time. I'd argue that this is a similar situation: text-to-speech is used for many, many tasks besides voicing copyrighted books.)

What we're talking about is whether, under these circumstances, it is fair use for a non-print-disabled person to use TTS to access a book.

There are really two cases here, print books and e-books. I think e-books are the easier case, simply because Kindle and many other major e-readers have had built-in TTS for many years. Publishers (including self-publishers) can opt out of this by applying DRM. So not using DRM has become the standard method for publishers to say, "I'm okay with having these words accessed by TTS." This is a system that seems to work for publishers; I can't imagine why any publisher would want to fuss with it. The legal pressure is more likely to come from readers, who might wish to argue that they are buying/leasing/borrowing digital words, not a particular method of accessing those words, so TTS should be available in all cases.

The more difficult case is the one we've been talking about, in which a reader seeks to convert a book from the print format to a digital format, solely for the purpose of accessing the text by TTS. (Again, this can be legally prevented by adding terms to access the print book; I believe some publishers have begun to do this.) Publishers forcibly argued in the Internet Archive case that they alone should have the right to create digital editions. Frankly, I think the wrong judgment was handed down in that case, but even if it holds up over time, the case was different in two different ways. One was that the primary purpose of the format-shifting wasn't to achieve access by TTS. The other difference - most importantly - was that the Internet Archive case involved distribution on a massive scale that wasn't even time-limited during a certain period.

I think the one thing that courts haven't yet put their minds around - but that computer manufacturers very much have - is that accessibility issues go beyond folks who are officially disabled. Whether one can access one's legally owned novel while driving a car is an accessibility issue. Whether one can access that novel on a day when one's eyes are too strained to read is an accessibility issue. So the non-print-disabled reader's argument is likely to be: I legally own/lease/borrow this book, so I should be able to access it in whatever way I can.

Publishers are likely to argue, "This is why we make audiobooks. Buy one." But note that audiobooks (when they exist, and they often don't) aren't TTS. TTS is specifically designed to access digital words; audiobooks are a creation unto themselves, with added value, and are priced accordingly. So making someone buy an audiobook (priced much higher than ebooks), when all the reader wants is to read their ebook in an accessible manner, seems unfair. Obviously, Amazon and other booksellers agree, because they continue to offer TTS in their ereaders while simultaneously selling audiobooks.

So I think it's likely to come down to whether personal, noncommercial, nondistributed book-format-shifting by the non-print-disabled, for the pupose of making primt books accessible through TTS, is permitted. I really don't know how the courts are likely to rule on this. I do think it would be an absolute tragedy if they ruled against this, though; think of all those orphan books that aren't commercially viable for audiobook or ebook format!

I know there have been court cases concerning personal, noncommercial, nondistributed format-shifting in video formats - do you know of any relevant cases? You're obviously a treasurehouse of information on copyright and fair use.

"Of course, in regard to copyright and intellectual property law - it is only as effective as the owner's ability to pro-actively protect their rights."

This topic keeps coming up in author circles, and every time it does, the lawyers in the crowd say, "No, you're mistaking copyrights for trademarks. Trademarks need to be actively defended to remain valid. Copyrights don't." Has the law on this changed recently? Or are you simply saying that, if you don't sue, you can't stop infringement?

"It also cost the NY Times quite a pretty penny."

What court case are you thinking of? Is it the one where the Times (I think it was the Times) assumed they had digital rights to their print articles, even though that wasn't written into their contracts with the writers?

"However, do not fall into the trap of thinking until a court rules on this - you can do whatever you want with copyright. Bad idea. . . . And there's a host of writers who have successfully sued fanfic writers."

Yet here we both are, in the fanfic community. And we've been here since fanfic was much more legally problematic than it is today. If TTS = fanfic in your analogy, then both of us should have given fanfic a wide berth from the moment we first encountered it, rather than waiting to see how the courts would rule.

(That was 23 years ago in my case. I'm increasingly unconvinced such a court case will ever occur, simply because media companies' attitudes toward fanfic have changed dramatically from "kill every speck of it" to "god, please, yes, write your stories, we could use all the unpaid publicity you can give us.")

"When a book is published - the copyright holder is asked if they want to make the book accessible to the visually impaired? If it is digitized, they are asked if they want to protect it, or make it accessible to other formats and digital download. [Note - it is fair use to make it accessible to the visually impaired, but not necessarily to make it free for them to own"

I'm afraid you've gotten matters a bit mixed up here - hardly surprising, since it probably looks this way from the author's point of view.

Under the Chafee Amendment, publishers have no legal ability to block the creation of accessible editions for the print-disabled by authorized entities, nor do they get to dictate the conditions under which those editions are distributed. (Most such editions are distributed by libraries, and at leat one such library, Bookshare, allows its readers to keep the editions permanently.) If the publisher or author refuses to cooperate, the authorized entity will simply create the edition by transcription or by scanning and OCRing a print book. That was what the Chafee Amendment set out to do: to drop the publishers and authors from the permission loop, because asking permission was creating an unconscionable delay in providing basic access by the disabled to books. It used to take months for new books to reach the print-disabled. Once the Chafee Amendment was passed, and scanning and OCRing came along, a new book could be scanned, OCRed, proofread, and distributed within a few hours of publication (as we all discovered when Bookshare set this system into motion as each new Harry Potter book was brought out).

The most the publishers can do is decide whether they want to distribute their digital editions to the print-disabled (in which case the print-disabled will receive digital access in the very same hour that non-print-disabled readers do, which is obviously the ideal situation). That's probably the scenario that the author contracts are covering. I'm happy to report that the vast majority of publishers - and, presumably, authors - are willing to grant permission for this, if only because they dislike the thought of readers accessing scanned editions.

This issue first came up, in fact, when SFWA mistook Bookshare for a pirating organization, many years ago. When SFWA belatedly realized that they had no grounds for a lawsuit, they instead reached an agreement with Bookshare that any author/publisher who wanted to could request that the scanned editions be replaced with the publisher's digital edition. Needless to say, this was a win for Bookshare and its readers. After that, Bookshare seems to have actively sought out publishers, asking them to donate their digital editions. The vast majority of ebooks now at Bookshare are now official editions, rather than scanned editions. But books by non-cooperative or no-longer-existing publishers can still to be scanned, OCRed, proofread, and distributed. That's the law.

"If text-to-speech threatened to replace books or took over, and made it so no one bought the actual books or only a few people did - than bye bye text to speech."

If a whole bunch of people used word processors to create terrorist messages, would that be the end of word processing? You'd have to argue that writing terrorist messages was the primary reason for creating and selling word processors, which is clearly not the case.

Look, synthesized speech, including TTS, has appeared in thousands of products that have nothing to do with ebooks. I don't think publishers would have a legal leg to stand on if they aregued that all these products should lose their access to TTS, simply because publishers were being harmed by a particular use that TTS was being put to.

"Usually, the text-to-speech can only access those works that have previously granted permission for accessible to the vision impaired. It’s not been a problem yet – since only the visually impaired has utilized it"

I think I misled you in what I said last time. Let me word myself better.

1) Text-to-speech has been widely used by the general population for decades. It has appeared in a variety of products, from videos to browsers to automated phone calls. Heck, my local subway system was probably using TTS in the 1970s for its automated audio messages. It's pretty much guaranteed by this point that, if you have access to a communication device, you've been the recipient of TTS, probably lots of it.

2) Text-to-speech has appeared in ereaders for the general public since at least the 2010s, probably earlier.

3) Until recently, audio reading of books was more popular among print-disabled readers than non-print-disabled readers. That's what I'm saying is new. And honestly, I have no figures to say how much use general readers are making of TTS, as opposed to audiobooks. But TTS is clearly more popular with general readers than in past years, because TTS apps are being more actively marketed to the general public.

"which isn't enough of the population to unfairly infringe upon commercial use - keep in mind, no one sues until their ability to make money off of their property is infringed upon, otherwise they don't tend to care"

Mm, I have to disagree with you here. In the current litigation-heavy situation, I think publishers would be suing disability libraries for all they were worth if those libraries didn't have legal protection. Which is precisely why such legal protections exist, not only at the US level but at the international level.

"the voice utilized by text-to-speech isn’t appealing enough to the non-visually impaired reader."

(*Cough, cough.*) Most of us have the same hearing as non-disabled people, you know. :)

(Actually, I'm one of the rare few who prefers TTS over audiobooks. I don't like having actors' interpretations override how I interpret the text. The neutral delivery of TTS is a bonus to me.)

"So there are cases against Text-to-Speech but mainly via voice actors."

Oh dear, another grey area. I should have emphasized: I've been talking about non-AI TTS. As I hinted in my previous comment, I do agree that AI opens new legal issues, if not because of voice rights issues, then because, the closer AI voices come to real voices, the greater the argument that publishers can make that AI-voiced books are a form of audiobook and therefore a threat to their ability to make money from audiobooks.

I'd have to agree with them on that. But I don't see non-AI TTS as a threat to authors and publishers (I maintain stubbornly). It's simply an accessible way of reading an ebook, not much different from enlarging the type size. It doesn't threaten audiobooks, which are a much richer reading experience for most readers. And TTS certainly doesn't stop readers from obtaining a legal copy of the book in the first place. This particular app maker's delusions set aside, there is nothing about TTS that inherently screams, "Go steal a book!"

[shadowkat]

I don't mind debates per se, just conflict. I think logically for the most part - and it's when the debate gets emotional - that it falls apart for me. Also I've learned not to debate about topics near and dear to my heart, or that involve family members. (I've made that mistake recently with a post about my niece, which I had to delete, and ended up losing a long-term social media acquaintance over. I thought people would know better - not to debate about family members activities? But alas, no.) I think most arguments online and off tend to be a misunderstandings or miscommunications - and usually over semantics? Which isn't really a debate?

Anyhow, thank you for taking the time to clarify your points. I didn't get back to you - because all of a sudden, I got busy at work again. Yay!

The writing is obtained legally . . . so no copying an entire book in a bookstore without buying the book. (Jeez, that app sounds like a lawsuit in the making.) The TTS is being used for noncommercial, personal uses. There is no license or DRM to prevent the use of TTS on the book. The TTS software itself is legally obtained - say, it's part of the operating system of the smartphone you bought. And finally, there is no distribution of a file or other product, which makes it unlike the examples of AI training, fanworks, and Kinko's course copies.

Okay, on this? We are in 100% agreement. As long as it is authorized, and the user has bought the book. If you buy the book and then transfer it via the app to speech, or find it in a book store, then buy the audio version instead, that's fine. Amazon offers that option. I've done that. I have no issues with that?

What I saw on FB - was an ad of a woman sitting on the floor of a bookstore, surrounded by books, taking pictures of the cover, and the text with her phone, and not buying them at all. And then telling people who were at a gym they were doing this all wrong, they should just scan the book at the book store, not buy it, and have it read to them for free, just need to get the app.

Now I may have misunderstood the ad? It was on FB and Instagram - and they tend to be fairly brief and not very clear. But, I found the idea of someone just going into a book store and willy-nilly scanning books then listening to them for free - with just a subscription to the software, disturbing. If it's like audible - where you pay a monthly fee, get so many free credits, and the writers are paid a royalty - then no issues. But if the writer is being paid or has authorized the service, and it is not negatively impacting them - go ahead.

Incidentally, note that Kinko's was sued in that court case, instead of IBM. The technology of photocopying wasn't a threat per se to publishers, because photocopying can be used for perfectly legal purposes; publishers use photocopying themselves, all the time. I'd argue that this is a similar situation: text-to-speech is used for many, many tasks besides voicing copyrighted books.)

On this, I agree. It's kind of similar to the Betamix case in a way, also Napster, and Tasini. The issue isn't copying the text or the software utilized for it, but why the text is being copied or the visuals are being copied. When I was licensing content way back in the 1990s and early 00s for electronic databases - I found a way to transfer the copyright for the licensed content via my licensing agreements. What I did was state that the library reference company owned the reformatted and digitized text - in this scenario - ASCI format - text. I argued that the ASCII was the work product of the reference company, and specifically translated data for electronic databases. So the library reference company, in this case, Wilson, owned the ASCII text and that ownership would transfer to any other database organization (such as EBSCO) if Wilson was bought. The rational was the translated text was a different version of the text, and licensed separately, and wouldn't exist without the hard work of Wilson. In return, Wilson would provide the journal publisher with the ASCII for their own use.

I put the clause in the contract, and they signed off on it. It was long time ago, so I don't remember exactly how I phrased it. But I do know, from a friend who had signed on with the new organization after Wilson was bought out by EBSCO, that every content license I signed with that little additional clause added - ensured that EBSCO held copyright over the translated text and could keep that content post-merger/sale. EBSCO could not sell the ASCII text to other people, it could only put it in its databases, and it could only be acquired by EBSCO in the merger of Wilson/EBSCO. So there were some limits on it? I think? (It was a long time ago and I've been out of the copyright and content licensing field since 2002. Also copyright law has changed a lot since then. This was before DVDs, and digitized imprints, and protections.)

This is somewhat similar to what you were saying about the Kinkos case, and to a degree Betamix. And it is what makes copyright law in the technological age so complicated. It's also in a way true of both the Napster and Tasini cases. What a lot of folks don't understand about court cases or the law - is it is often narrow in some places, vague in others, and open to interpretation. One court or group of lawyers may interpret it one way, while another interprets it very differently. The Supreme Court is an example of this? It often will overturn a prior appellate court's decision, or in some instances a prior Supreme Court decision - because the Justice's interpretations of the law vary. The legislative branch often writes in a lot of vague loopholes - just to get the law passed, or compromises.

The trick is knowing how to interpret it? I agree with you - the Kinkos case doesn't make it illegal to photocopy a book per se, but it does make it illegal to make multiple copies of the book as a substitution for students actually buying the book. There are however, caveats to that - such as the book being out of print or otherwise unavailable, in the public domain and the copies are for educational purposes. And creating software that permits copying is not inherently illegal - that can and often is used for a various purposes.

Betamix had a similar situation - it is allowable to copy a television show, so you can watch it later. You are still watching it. And for watching it more than once. What is not permitted is showing it to a huge gathering on a huge screen, or mass-producing it. What gets tricky - is preventing folks from selling it. They ran into the same issue with music. Napster came about, because it is one thing to make a mixed tape or copy a cassette or DVD and give to a friend, it's another to sell it on the street to a lot of people or in Napster's case distribute it electronically. (You can't really do what Napster did now - by the way? Artists tag their songs - so whenever it is played on the internet, downloaded or remastered or sung or used - there's a royalty tracker that informs the artist or copyright holder that it is being used. I found this out from a friend who works in the music industry. They informed me that they get notified any time anyone plays their song or remasters it, or sings a version of it, and that person is sent a notice to pay a certain amount or stop and desist.)

***

Actually if people were sending terrorist messages via wordprocessors, their word-processors would be seized. (But only theirs.) And I think you mean computers? Not sure a word-processor can send a message? I may be wrong about that? The old version couldn't. Or at least I couldn't send email by word-processor back in the day.

But it's not the same thing? Computers don't just write text, they do other things besides that. And it's easier to disable the people who are using it for nefarious purposes, since they make up a small percentage of the population.

Arguably, I'd say currently the folks using text to speech do not make up a large percentage of the population, or we wouldn't have printed books. (Supply and demand principles.) It's kind of like e-books, they've not done away with printed books either because not everybody uses ebooks, there's still quite a few who read printed books. Or read both. But e-books aren't free. You have to buy the book on e-books, or borrow it from the library, which has a limited number of copies, and it's not easy to loan or give it to someone else. I'm guessing this may be true of text-to-speech as well - that you can't easily give it or send it to a friend? Not sure about that. E-books - I know you can't. At least the Kindle version - you can't.

I'm not sure how the text-to-speech system works? But I'm guessing that if you acquiring the book for "free" you don't own it? You are borrowing it for a limited time? That would fit the e-book model in regards to library books.

That's what I need to be clear on - I have no issues with making the works accessible to whomever needs them, or to the general public as audio books. My e-reader does translate text to speech in the monotone. How you can stand it is beyond me. It gives me a headache. It's because it wars with the voice in my head, and I just get distracted. I don't tend to like most audio books - unless they are read by a good voice actor or graphic dramatization - because then I can see it unfold like a movie in my mind. When a book is read - I see it visually in a way, as feelings and images. I think visually not auditory. So monotone hurts my head. I don't understand how anyone can listen to it - so I thought that you must put up with it out of desperation? It's either that or not reading at all?

What I have issues with - is selling the book as audible without paying the writer. Or reproducing it as audible and distributing it broadly, at no cost. That worries me. Which is what the advertisement implied, not what you are implying.

It's been a long time? But I vaguely remember being asked if I wanted my book to be made accessible to the visually impaired, and I said yes, when I non-traditionally published it. I think I made it accessible in large print.

I like the idea of the AI text to speech - from a writer point of view - mainly because this means I don't have to do it myself or pay someone to do it - it's incredibly expensive. But, it is also alarming, if it means the book is given away for free to the masses? I mean 1000 people, isn't an issue. I did free Kindle giveaways, and I'm on Kindle Unlimited. But over 1 billion given away...is problematic. Unlikely though, since I don't see 1 billion being interested in text to speech? 1 billion doesn't use the library.

[duskpeterson]

Yay, we're in agreement on the main topic! Now we get to have semantics discussions. :)

"What I saw on FB - was an ad of a woman sitting on the floor of a bookstore, surrounded by books, taking pictures of the cover, and the text with her phone, and not buying them at all. And then telling people who were at a gym they were doing this all wrong, they should just scan the book at the book store, not buy it, and have it read to them for free, just need to get the app."

I think this company must also be selling bridges in Brooklyn? Incidentally, this sort of thing feeds into bookstore owners' worst fears. They already have to contend with customers browsing through their stores and then going home and buying the books online.

"When I was licensing content way back in the 1990s and early 00s for electronic databases"

Oo, you've been at this for a long time. (And thanks for all the delightful technical info you included in your comment.)

My first encounter with the licensing problem when a magazine I'd written for in the 90s (a major magazine in its field) contacted to tell me, with great delight, that I now had the privilege of having my print article added to their new electronic database. Which they had done, without asking me.

Checked my contract and discovered I'd signed a work-for-hire contract. Just how that got past me, I do not know; I'd been warned against such contracts by authors' magazines since I was a teen. I must have been dazzled by having my byline in a well-known magazine. At any rate, I was not nearly as pleased by this development as the magazine was.

"Artists tag their songs - so whenever it is played on the internet, downloaded or remastered or sung or used - there's a royalty tracker that informs the artist or copyright holder that it is being used."

Wow, fascinating. I didn't know this.

"I think you mean computers? Not sure a word-processor can send a message?"

I said "create terrorist messages," not "send." :) I meant that, if you wrote an illegal message on a word processor (or typewriter or piece of paper), the writing technology was not to blame.

"It's kind of like e-books, they've not done away with printed books either"

Um . . . I never suggested TTS would?

Audiobook sales are soaring. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone has surveyed how much TTS book-reading is being done. I suspect this is one of those reading activities that is running under the radar. If someone asked you what formats of books you had read, would it occur to you to mention TTS?

"But e-books aren't free."

(*cough* AO3 *cough*)

I assume you're referring to for-sale e-books? Any commercially sold TTS audio file would be referred to as audiobook . . . so yeah, commercially sold audiobooks aren't free. But TTS can also be used to turn free text into audio. I could read your comment aloud with TTS if I wanted to go grubbing into Windows's accessibility settings.

"I'm not sure how the text-to-speech system works?"

It's software. It can be integrated into an ereader, a word processor, a computer . . . Pretty much anything. Back in the day, I used to have a nifty TTS app that would translate any (unprotected) written text into audio and create an MP3 file, so that you could listen to the text on the go. (I used that MP3-output feature to create an audio pronunciation guide to the proper nouns in one of my series. Here it is, in all its 2006 glory.)

But mostly, the way people encounter TTS is through an app with a wider function than TTS. So, for example, if I wanted to turn on an iPhone's TTS, I would go to the Accessibility section of the phone, turn on VoiceOver, and VoiceOver would read aloud to me what was on the screen as I navigated around the phone.

My recollection (it's been a long time since I've used VoiceOver) is that there are some restrictions on this; VoiceOver can't access certain apps. So I doubt it would work with ebooks that have DRM. But it will work with ebooks without conventional DRM. Provided the ereader app permitted VoiceOver, VoiceOver would work on any of my e-books, because I choose not to apply DRM to my e-books. It would certainly work on any AO3 e-book.

If we're talking about making profit from TTS outputs: As you mention regarding AI, authors can use TTS to create audiobooks, which they then sell to readers . . . which begs the question of why authors would bother to do so, since readers can achieve the same end by using the TTS software themselves. My guess is that it's because (1) DRM excludes a lot of readers from reading ebooks by TTS, and (2) a well-done TTS audiobook - whether AI or non-AI - requires a lot of editing to tweak the pronunciation.

(As just one example: "read" has two pronunciations, depending on whether it's present tense or past tense. TTS software isn't sophisticated enough to know what tense your verb is. Or at least, TTS software wasn't sophisticated enough in the past - heaven knows what AI TTS software is like!)

The short answer to your earlier question is that TTS book files are like any other audio files: you can get them for free (legally or illegally), you can borrow them from the library, or you can buy them. A lot of audiobooks now are AI TTS (though honestly, last I checked, voice-acted audiobooks remained far superior).

"I don't understand how anyone can listen to it - so I thought that you must put up with it out of desperation? It's either that or not reading at all?"

Heh. :) Well, I think practical needs do motivate some readers; if they're commuting by car, they'll listen to an audiobook, rather than read a printed book (one fervently hopes). When I've listened to TTS, it was because my hands and eyes were busy doing housework. But some people - an increasingly large percentage of the population in our audio-visual culture - are audio-oriented. What percentage of them enjoy TTS (AI or non-AI), I don't know. But self-publishing platforms are making an aggressive effort to get all self-publishers to bring out audiobooks, so we're likely to see a lot more AI audiobooks in the future.

"I like the idea of the AI text to speech - from a writer point of view - mainly because this means I don't have to do it myself or pay someone to do it - it's incredibly expensive. But, it is also alarming, if it means the book is given away for free to the masses?"

It's media, so by definition it's vulnerable to piracy . . . but no more so than ebooks. I don't know exactly what options are available to audiobook creators, but if Audible didn't ask you at some point whether you wanted DRM applied to your audiobook, I'd be mightily surprised.

If you're wondering whether Audible is more vulnerable to piracy than KU . . . honestly, I don't know. I don't know what anti-piracy measures Amazon has in place for the two systems. But there's nothing about an audiobook that makes it inherently more likely to be mass-pirated than other media.

(Also, this reminds me of when an author, circa 2000, was asked what he would do if he woke up to discover that a million people had read a pirated version of one of his books. He replied, "Celebrate." Would that obtaining a million new readers was that easy.)

[shadowkat]

I decided to send you a link to the ad on Instagram - because I don't think you comprehend what I was trying to explain in various posts? Because this is beginning to feel like a whose on first whats on second semantics Abbot and Costello routine, or arguing for the sake of arguing? I do that enough at work, and I get paid. I won't do it for free.;-)

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJ9gA-XRwRK/

Sorry, I still find it disturbing. But you either get that or you don't, I guess? But the above link should take you to the ad that bothered me.

[shadowkat]

Checked my contract and discovered I'd signed a work-for-hire contract. Just how that got past me, I do not know; I'd been warned against such contracts by authors' magazines since I was a teen. I must have been dazzled by having my byline in a well-known magazine. At any rate, I was not nearly as pleased by this development as the magazine was.

Wouldn't feel too bad about that? That's about 90% of television writing agreements, comic book agreements, and most newspaper and magazine writing agreements. It kind of has to be - otherwise they'd go broke. The publisher doesn't make that much off of the print issue of the magazine, it's the resale of the content that they make the money off of. Also, for an electronic database? The journal publisher is getting maybe 5% of the proceeds. Think about it this way - there are over 1000 articles in the database, it's subscribers are libraries - who provide the content for free to their users for research. The reference publishing company might sell it to the library for about - $5,000 a month, it has to divide that amount by everyone who contributed, which is about 1000 publishers, the folks who digitized the content (they have to painstakingly scan it in, then translate it digitally), the folks who sell it, the folks who index the content, the folks who come up with the indexing system, and the search mechanism...etc. There's simply not enough left over to pay the freelance writer who was already paid for writing the article.

It's why the NY Times didn't sell their content to Electronic Databases - their writers weren't work for hire. But Journal writers are - they get a journal article published - that journal retains the rights. They can't resell their article.

Of course was decades ago - that I did this - before I ran screaming from copyright law and the publishing industry and jumped into an entirely different field regarding contracts.

Now, image licensing is harder - such as photographs and art, we couldn't get distribution rights to those. Not back then. So the digitization process had to remove all the images (ie. photos). Music rights is even dicier - in music licensing - they often give you one-time broadcast rights. So for example, you are creating a television series, and you decide you want to feature a song by Billie Joel, you have to pay him for every time that episode of the show is shown. Unless you manage to make a deal that allows for the episode to be reshown with the music, and the music is considered part of the episode.

Copyright law is convoluted, constantly changing, and headache inducing. Also not very lucrative. I worked in it roughly from 1996-2002, and then again briefly in 2007 for a video game developer - regarding the licensing of video games. (That was even worse.) I've not worked in licensing since 2007, happy to say. Horrible field.

[duskpeterson]

Thanks for all the industry insight! I don't remember the details of my case after all this time. What irritated me then was that (1) none of the author industry publications warned me about the rights situation of this particular magazine, (2) electronic databases weren't on most authors' radar back then, and (3) the magazine was insufferably cheery about the news. Imagine receiving a notice saying, "Oh, hey, we're about to make your article available to millions via 5D hyperspace comm, and you won't make any money from it, nyah nyah nyah. Aren't you warm with happiness?"

[shadowkat]

LOL! I was on the opposite side of that argument a lot of the time. I remember explaining to the Economist our royalty formula - which basically paid them less than .00005 cents per article.

It's worse with video games, comics and television shows. The writers in those professions make next to nothing. They are work for hire for the most part. Mainly because it's next to impossible to split the royalties among all the contributors. So the studio pays the writers a salary for delivering product, but doesn't give them rights to the material.

[duskpeterson]

I found that WFH educational publishing paid decently per word, as long as you didn't think about how much the publisher was likely to earn from the book. The deadlines were killer, though: two weeks to research and write a short book. I quickly figured out why most bibliographies in such books have only three titles listed. Sad to think that these books are how students are learning.