In the apparent war between publishers/authors and readers (and no, there shouldn’t be a war between us, but that’s what seems to happen in times of innovation), Amazon has again forsaken us. By “us,” I mean readers, and by “forsaken” I mean that Amazon gave in to the Authors Guild regarding the ‘read it now” function of the Kindle 2. From now on, authors and publishers can disable the feature on any titles they choose.
I bet Amazon could have won any lawsuit, just like Google could have won the copyright lawsuit that the Authors Guild brought against them a few years ago over their library scanning project, but Amazon doesn’t seem to want a fight. I get that. On the other hand, it’s infuriating to watch this group of 8,000 or so members strip out functionality that they don’t legally have any right to touch.
I hope someone quickly develops a way to block those crippled ebooks from searches on Amazon’s store. If they want to sell reduced-funtionality versions of their books, there should be an easy way to filter them out so readers don’t have to bother with them ever again.
“Amazon lets publishers and writers disable Kindle 2′s read-aloud feature” [Los Angeles Times]
Amazon caves to Authors Guild, allows publishers to disable "Read It Now"
In the apparent war between publishers/authors and readers (and no, there shouldn’t be a war between us, but that’s what seems to happen in times of innovation), Amazon has again forsaken us. By “us,” I mean readers, and by “forsaken” I mean that Amazon gave in to the Authors Guild regarding the ‘read it now” function of the Kindle 2. From now on, authors and publishers can disable the feature on any titles they choose.
I bet Amazon could have won any lawsuit, just like Google could have won the copyright lawsuit that the Authors Guild brought against them a few years ago over their library scanning project, but Amazon doesn’t seem to want a fight. I get that. On the other hand, it’s infuriating to watch this group of 8,000 or so members strip out functionality that they don’t legally have any right to touch.
I hope someone quickly develops a way to block those crippled ebooks from searches on Amazon’s store. If they want to sell reduced-funtionality versions of their books, there should be an easy way to filter them out so readers don’t have to bother with them ever again.
“Amazon lets publishers and writers disable Kindle 2′s read-aloud feature” [Los Angeles Times]