"The move comes as a response to criticism of the feature from portions of the publishing industry. Last month, the Authors Guild, a writer advocacy group, claimed that "Read to Me" constitutes a new literature format that allows Amazon to skirt rules around licensing book formats. E-books and audiobooks, for instance, are both licensed for compensation purposes.
"But the Guild said that the text-to-speech capability of the Kindle 2 makes for a new format that is not covered under existing agreements.
"Amazon said that it aims to avoid the problem by giving copyright holders the opportunity to specify whether their e-books would support the feature. The company said it's now revamping its publishing system to enable writers, authors and publishers to disable the technology on a case-by-case basis."
