![]() According to Authors Guild executive director Paul Aiken, "They don't have the right to read a book out loud." Why not? According to Aiken, when a book is read aloud by a Kindle 2, that creates an unlawful derivative work. Parents everywhere should be on the look out for legal papers haling them into court for reading to their kids. ![]() Luckily for parents, teachers, and everyone else who likes to read aloud, the Authors Guild is simply wrong. Let's start with the derivative work argument. ![]() Under the Copyright Act, a derivative work is "a work based upon one or more preexisting works. Which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship." While a book read aloud may be useful (or not-let's remember this is a speech synthesizer, not a human being, reading the book), where is the originality that makes the version read aloud on a Kindle 2 creative, independent of the original book? The design of this new nifty feature may have been creative, but its use is not. No creativity, no copyrightability, end of story (pardon the pun). Even if that wasn't a bar to the derivative work argument, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has held that a derivative work must have some concrete or permanent 'form.'" The Kindle 2 creates some sounds that immediately trail away into the ether, thus failing that test.
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