"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."
