I was just about to write a post on how this is just another example of stuff we can’t get in Canada – and discovered that Steven Matthews already commented on this in a Slaw post.  He says in part:

I would really love to have a Kindle. really.  And this story from the Silicon Alley Insider isn’t making things any better.  See Dan Frommer’s live note that “Kindle sales are now 35% of book sales when Kindle editions are available.”

You would think this kind of statement would jump start some action! For publishers, for consumers, and especially for Amazon to expand their offering…  to say…  north of the border?  I’m also not fussy about the screen size. I’d take a hand-me-down for that matter.

What I am losing my patience with, is waiting years every time an innovative wired gadget comes along.  Do I really need to have a Rogers Kindle for this to come to pass in Canada? Did the Canadian-lag on the iPhone help anyone?

We seem to get the “latest” cellphones one generation behind the latest in other parts of the world.  Services like Hulu are blocked at the border, and various services by providers such as Google and Microsoft are US only.

The Kindle text to speech feature has created a controversy on both the legal issue of copyright, and the business/consumer issue of the merits of computerized text to speech vs. audio books using voice actors.

Those on the voice actor side say that a computer generated voice just can’t match a human voice for subtlety, tone and context.  (At least not yet.)

On the copyright front, Amazon has decided that – despite its position that there is no copyright violation in text to speech – it won’t offer the feature for books if the author doesn’t want it.

In a CNN article, David Ciccarelli of Voices.com - a London, Ont. service that matches voice actors with those seeking to hire them – points out that Amazon is hedging its bets, as it also owns  Audible, a  service that sells professionally narrated audiobooks.

The Authors Guild is upset with the new Kindle, claiming that its text to speech feature violates copyright.  Several comments have been made about the dubiousness of the claim. 

See the New York Times op-ed by the president of the Authors Guild called The Kindle Swindle.

See reaction to it by Boing Boing, Techdirt, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.