Top publishers sue Audible for copyright infringement

(apnews.com)

17 points | by Vaslo 1679 days ago

4 comments

  • metalliqaz 1679 days ago
    Once again big media companies are just making up new rights for themselves. The idea that the properly licensed spoken word version of a published work does not intrinsically include the text is laughable. What's next? Kindle books are infringing on copyright because they reformat the text of the book into a version that fits the user's screen size and preferred font? I mean why not?

    And I suppose YouTube is infringing on copyrighted videos when it adds machine-translated CCs, right?

    Modern copyright is indistinguishable from rent-seeking.

  • DominikPeters 1679 days ago
    I don’t understand why publishers are against Audible Captions. That feature makes audiobooks less pirate-able, and it also won’t lead to more pirating of ebooks, since it’s better to share a cracked ePub rather than ill-formatted captions. The only revenue loss I can see is from customers who would otherwise buy both the Kindle and the Audible version, but that must be a small fraction.
    • socalnate1 1679 days ago
      My guess is that they just want to be paid more for them.

      (i.e. They sold the rights to sell the audiobook alone; if audible wants to also include a text version of the book, they want more money).

      • Jemm 1679 days ago
        At the expense of accessibility.
        • tinus_hn 1678 days ago
          Audiobooks accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing.
    • blueboo 1679 days ago
      They're not against it. They're against licensing it for free, and what permitting media-shifting surprises might do to damage all their licensing agreements.
  • wfdctrl 1679 days ago
    Well, technically it's a derivative work, they have every right to sue.
    • votepaunchy 1679 days ago
      If the translation is performed on device then Audible would not be liable, considering non-infringing use (see: VCR).