RMS on Amazon's "Swindle"

As you've probably seen, there is concern over Amazon's plans to pull the text-to-voice capability of the Kindle e-book reader, because of misguided pressure from authors groups in the US. There's been a lot of discussion about this, and how to react to it, on the A2k mailing list, including the following characteristic submission from a certain Richard M Stallman:

I sympathize with the feeling behind these protests, but they are directed at the wrong target.

The protestors rightly condemn the Authors Guild for demanding the removal of the screen reader feature, but the way they are doing it makes Amazon look like a victim. Actually it is the main perpetrator.

The reason that Amazon can turn off the screen reader capability is that the machines use non-free software, controlled by Amazon rather than by the user. If Amazon can turn this off retroactively (does anyone know for certain if they did?), it implies the product has a dangerous back door.

In addition, the Amazon Swindle is designed with Digital Restrictions Management to stop people from sharing. It is a nasty product with an evil goal.

I hope there will be protests against Amazon's role in these events.

Well, at least he's consistent.

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Dwindling the Kindle Swindle

Here's someone writing in the New York Times about the Kindle's text-to-speech function:

You may be thinking that no automated read-aloud function can compete with the dulcet resonance of Jim Dale reading “Harry Potter” or of authors, ahem, reading themselves. But the voices of Kindle 2 are quite listenable.

Well, yes, that's precisely what I was thinking. But I'm willing to go along with the point.

However, consider this: if people start using the function, it suggests that they like listening to books. So maybe some of them would like to listen to the author, rather than the dulcet tones, and even prepared to pay a premium. A smaller number might even bestir themselves to go along to a book reading by that author. See? opportunities, not threats....