Major book publishers sue Amazon's Audible over new speech-to-text feature - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/23/20830057/amazon-audible-speech-to-text-feature-lawsuit-major-book-publishers <comment><USER2> "...devalue the market for cross-format products, and harm Publishers, authors, and the consumers who enjoy and rely on books."

Could someone explain the licensing like I'm 5 that doesn't end up with "because publishers want more money"

When I buy a book I am buying the story. The authors words on paper (well on digital ink). When I buy an audio book I am buying the authors words performed by a voice actor.

I get why the audiobook is more. I'm paying for the author's story + actor. But I never understood why once I have the audiobook I could not be allowed the text version for free.

How are they doing anything but trying to charge me twice for the same story?

<comment><USER3> _that doesn 't end up with "because publishers want more money"_

Well no, because publishers (and authors) do want more money.

 _When I buy a book I am buying the story._

This is where your analysis goes wrong.

 _But I never understood why once I have the audiobook I could not be allowed the text version for free._

For the same reason you're not entitled to a free (or even discount) paperback if you buy the hardback, or why I can't return the paperback I dropped in the bathtub for new copy. You're not licensing the story, you're buying a specific implementation of that story. Furthermore different companies have bought the rights to different versions of that story in different mediums, and they all want to earn their money back.

<comment><USER2> > For the same reason you're not entitled to a free (or even discount) > paperback if you buy the hardback, or why I can't return the paperback I > dropped in the bathtub for new copy.

I think I need something better than that. You are talking about 2 physical items, I don't think anyone would argue just because you buy 1 product off the shelf doesn't mean you are entitled to the rest of the shelf

An audio book requires author, editor, publisher, actor, distributor

A digital book requires the same minus actor

Where as a physical book requires the same + printer, binder, possibly artists, typesetter, shipper

In this case the audiobook and digital book have same distributor, amazon

Say I want to whispersync The Way of Kings. I already own the audiobook but now I have to buy the Kindle version for full price, which is $9.99 (I double checked in a private tab to make sure amazon wasnt giving any discounts)

> Furthermore different companies have bought the rights to different versions > of that story in different mediums, and they all want to earn their money > back.

How am I not paying for the same thing twice? If there is some other entity involved I wouldn't mind paying a small difference for their service to bring it to that medium.

Why is it people get paid twice for contributing nothing to bring it to another medium?

<comment><USER4> Your question is a reasonable one, but you're misunderstanding the bigger picture. The bigger picture is that you are offered something specific for a specified price. You can accept the deal, reject it, or make a counter offer.

What you can't do is declare that your payment means that you actually bought the rights to the text of the book or anything else you unilaterally and post facto include in the purchase for philosophical reasons, when those things weren't included in the offer that you accepted. What was offered, and you accepted, was a license to unlimited personal listening to an audio performance. If you want something else, make an offer or wait for them to make one.

It's not quite as simple as this because governments often want to get into the deal and declare that certain offers aren't what the offerer offers but what the lawmakers think he _should_ have offered, but absent this intercession, you were offered an audio performance for a certain price, and if you accepted, that's what you got.

<comment><USER5> Great. I accepted the audio performance and that's what i got. Can i run the audio performance through a speech to text engine?

<comment><USER6> Not a lawyer, but I imagine that you, as an end user, can do that, so long as you are not selling that text or distributing that text. But Amazon, who is licensed to provide you with an audio book but not a text book, cannot offer you a speech-to-text rendition of that audio book as part of your audiobook purchase. Nor do I imagine them being able to offer you the technology to do it on your own as a "feature", as that would be a rather hideous loophole.

<comment><USER7> I imagine that Amazon are going to argue in court that if the publishers are held to be correct, then computer monitor manufacturers are not licensed to display copies of the work and that they also should pay the publisher (again) as should people who make software that alters the performance, e.g. volume or equalizer functions.

Amazon is not fundamentally offering a textual copy of the work. If they were doing so they would be violating the license. Instead they are offering a technology to transform the (possibly flawed performance of) the work using a tool (that is itself possibly flawed). That is not the same thing as distributing a textual copy of the original work.

A computer is a device on which the work is licensed to be distributed, and it happens to have the capability to transform the work, just as a volume knob or a graphic equalizer would.

If Amazon can't offer this technology because they _are_ licensed to distribute the work, what is to stop someone selling such technology who is _not_ licensed to distribute the work? The effect is the same, precisely because it is a general purpose computing device with sophisticated functionality. And yet I don't see publishers getting far with a claim that all manufacturers of speech-to-text devices (think of deaf people) should pay them because the device _could_ be used to transform their works.

Of course I know this is not how any publisher sees their work. E.g. you need a different license to perform a work than you need to modify or make a video production of a work (mechanical vs sync license, etc.)

<comment><USER8> > _I imagine that Amazon are going to argue in court that if the publishers > are held to be correct, then computer monitor manufacturers are not licensed > to display copies of the work and that they also should pay the publisher > (again) as should people who make software that alters the performance, e.g. > volume or equalizer functions._

The well-established doctrine of patent/trademark/copyright exhaustion [1] prevents this undesirable result.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_doctrine_under_U.S....](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exhaustion_doctrine_under_U.S._law)

<comment><USER9> To clarify, the exhaustion doctrine allows the owner of the licensed work (ebook, etc) to access/display/use the work except as disallowed by the license.

This includes viewing it on a computer monitor. It's irrelevant that the computer monitor maker does not have a license to the work, since the viewer does.

In the case of the audiobook speech-to-text argument: the licensee has a license to the _audiobook_ but not the prose version of the work, which is a legally distinct creation under many decades of international and domestic IP law.

So Amazon _or the customer_ needs to have the license to the prose work for speech-to-text to be defensible, but neither do.

<comment><USER7> I am not convinced by this. Amazon does not at any point convey a copy of the written work to the customer. At no point does such a copy exist, nor can it conceivably be constructed from the technology Amazon are supplying to their customers.

This is not (if I understand correctly) a PDF document they can download and read, it's a technology that allows the words that are currently being spoken to be seen in written text.

At no time does a legally significant quantity of the written work get conveyed to the customer. Amazon will just ask the publishers to show where this alleged copy of the textual work resides in their system. They won't be able to do so, as it doesn't exist there.

This does seem to be what they are in fact arguing. And I think they will prevail. I would not expect them to prevail if they offered a pdf of the book or if their software actually contained a copy of the original text that was being conveyed to the customer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't know about the legality, but this is seems like a very useful feature.

When I was a teen (well, _younger_ teen), I learned to understand and comprehend western accents by watching a lot of videos by North American or European creators and using close captions on YouTube. At this point, I don't need them anymore, but I certainly did when I first got started.

Clearly this feature on audible can serve a similar purpose, and can definitely help students like myself in developing countries who are taught how to read and write English, but not exactly _speak_ it - at least not in the same way as the western world.

<comment><USER11> Does it really help to learn English to have a poorly transcribed audio version because Amazon doesn't want to pay the license fees?

<comment><USER12> I think transcription (even if not perfect) helps a lot when English is not your first language and you are still training your ear. Remember not everybody processes audio the same way, think ASD or ADD people.

<comment><USER13> The implication hidden in OP's comment is that Amazon, a multi-billion dollar company, is seeking to pay less money to people generating content for its platforms and instead provide users with an inferior product. The question was semi-rhetorical, with the understood context being that the best choice would be for Amazon to pay for all the licenses required to make their products better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if the publishers will also be mad about Android Q's upcoming feature which can transcribe any audio on your phone: [https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/7/18528447/google- android-q-...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/7/18528447/google-android-q- live-caption-video-transcription-io-2019)

<comment><USER15> Probably - publishers are always mad.

Kindles actually used to have headphones jacks and a feature to automatically transcribe books that you owned into auto-generated speech.

It was a fantastic accessibility feature, but the publishers complained, and the feature and the hardware supporting it were both removed. Although like people are saying, I guess the headphone jack also probably wasn't a very popular feature.

<comment><USER16> Kindle Speech to Text is still a feature. It's just optional for books to support it or not.

Headphone jack was probably removed to save money... I think the high end kindles support Bluetooth.

<comment><USER17> > It's just optional for books to support it or not.

Translation: It's optional for the publishers to enable DRM restricting it or not.

If I buy a paperback book, there is nothing stopping me from building a machine I can insert the book into that scans the page, OCRs it to text, and then converts the text to audio.

DRM'd ebooks are a travesty, which is why I immediately remove all DRM as soon as I buy one so that I have full freedom to do whatever I want with it.

<comment><USER16> > If I buy a paperback book, there is nothing stopping me from building a > machine I can insert the book into that scans the page, OCRs it to text, and > then converts the text to audio.

Nothing except the extreme hassle of doing so.

Digital is different, because it's so much easier and cheaper to perform such transformative operations.

<comment><USER17> The point is, there are no real restrictions to use of paperback books. I can whiteout words, tear out pages, cut out quotes and tape them on my wall, photocopy, etc. Basically you have the freedom to do anything you want with it because you own it. You would probably get into hot water if you tried to start selling/distributing unauthorized copies, but as far as private use goes, the sky is the limit.

eBooks are extremely restrictive by comparison. They are so locked down that you can't do any of the above things I mentioned. You only have one basic freedom: to read it with approved software on an approved device with the publisher in complete control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I feel like a number of AI applications are a bit like this. In this case, the training set could be the original book text, and an audiobook reading of the books (over thousands of books). When trained on that dataset the audio recordings are used to regenerate the original text.

So training set==test set and you don't care because the only purpose of the model was to circumvent certain potential copyright issues.

I feel this same issue exists in many other areas too. A model gets trained on a bunch of copyrighted data, and then can generate similar data... It seems like a kind of gray area. On one hand you might say the learning process is just "inspired" by the copyrighted material... someone else might say it's just derived from it (and should require licensing).

This often seems to get overlooked, particularly in image generation applications. Yea, of course you can generate interesting looking pictures. The question that often remains unanswered is how novel are these images... what is the closest image in the original dataset.

<comment><USER19> Not sure copyright of a Audio version of a book include to use for other uses such as training models. If this is not mentioned in copyright, I would still assume publisher can a make a strong case about it is used for not the intended purpose.

<comment><USER20> I don't see a practical way to prove this though. The software is developed behind closed doors and unless someone explicitly leaks this information, it's just a caption feature working really well. Amazon could claim they trained it on a legit data set they had all the necessary rights for.

Or am I missing something and they're openly admitting they used it?

<comment><USER21> Just because it is difficult to prove does not make it less of a violation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Honest question: If Apple would integrate an AI-based speech-to-text feature in the next iPhone as an accessibility feature that works for all audio captured by microphone or generated by apps, would that be seen as copyright infringing? Would it have to be disabled for Audible (even at the request of a single publisher), Netflix (by request of a Netflix licensing partner) and other apps? If yes, then the publishers have a point. If not, shouldn't Audible be allowed to add thus a feature to their app if the speech-to-text feature doesn't use the original manuscript but only the audio for Realtime processing?

<comment><USER14> Actually Android Q is adding exactly that feature so we may get to see this argument play out: [https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/7/18528447/google- android-q-...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/7/18528447/google-android-q- live-caption-video-transcription-io-2019)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> By this logic, when you buy a book, you'd need a special license to read it to your children. It's the exact inverse of speech-to-text - if one is forbidden, then so is the other.

<comment><USER24> The critical difference is that your reading it to your children is not distributed or for sale, therefore is in private fair use.

<comment><USER23> But allowing a user to convert between text and speech on their own device _isn 't_ selling the converted version.

And if this conversion is done not locally, but via SaaS, that's just an implementation detail. I believe there's precedent for this (which I cannot find at the moment), but if this was not the case, then you could not touch any document you did not have copyright on using e.g. Google Docs.

Edit: Found the precedent where time-shifting (i.e. video recording) was found to be non-infringing, regardless of if it's done locally or remotely [1].

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon_Network,_LP_v._CSC_Hol...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon_Network,_LP_v._CSC_Holdings,_Inc).

<comment><USER25> This isn't the user doing the conversion, it's an Amazon product doing it. You say it's "just" an implementation detail, but the distinction of how it's being generated matters.

<comment><USER23> If I add notes to a PDF using Adobe Acrobat, did _I_ add the notes, or did an Adobe product do it? What if I do it with Google Docs, in the cloud? Then it's not even on my machine.

<comment><USER26> You are conflating agency of action with the means of action.

<comment><USER27> This is a distinction I don't understand.

If I run a local speech-to-text client on my computer for my own use, that's pretty established fair use.

If I run the same software on a Raspberry Pi and transmit the results over my LAN for my own use, I assume that's also fair use.

If I provision an AWS VM and run the same software there, and then transmit the results back to my device for my own use, is that fair use?

If I get my best friend to provision the AWS VM and run the same software there, and then transmit the results back to my device for my own use, is that fair use?

If Amazon provisions the AWS VM for me, and runs the same software there, and then transmits the results back to my device for my own use, is that fair use?

People are drawing a line here that I genuinely don't see. The whole thing feels incredibly arbitrary to me. The agency of action is that the user is asking a computer to perform a task. The means of action is a piece of software running on a computer, computing results on the fly.

<comment><USER26> >If Amazon provisions the AWS VM for me, and runs the same software there, and then transmits the results back to my device for my own use, is that fair use?

Did Amazon do it out of their own volition, or did you instruct them to do it? Also what you're considering fair use, may or may not be fair use. Fair use is a specific exemption made in a specific context. You cannot reapply that exemption in an SaaS context and call it equivalent. You'll have to first demonstrate the legal basis for your claim that the two contexts are equivalent.

Also I do recognize that all of us here are non-experts giving our two cents, so any disagreement we have is TBH inconsequential to what the law actually says and how its actually interpreted! :)

<comment><USER23> > Did Amazon do it out of their own volition, or did you instruct them to do > it?

By purchasing the work through Amazon's store, and clicking the "enable speech-to-text", he instructed Amazon to do it. I should mention this looks like an _extremely_ vague distinction, and it's not even mutually exclusive. Amazon provides a service of its own volition, and he took advantage of that service.

<comment><USER26> EULAs and those kinds of agreements have their own legal problems with how they can be enforced, so its best not to complicate things here !

>I should mention this looks like an extremely vague distinction, and it's not even mutually exclusive.

I don't agree with your opinion that its vague.

> Amazon provides a service of its own volition, and he took advantage of that > service.

If the action that Amazon took could be proven to be "just as easily" done by the end user, then perhaps Amazons acting on behalf of the end user could be considered equivalent to the end user themselves performing that action.

For e.g. If these is a fair use exemption for making a copy of a CD for a personal backup, then if I told my neighbors kid to do it for me, I think it could be considered equivalent as me doing it myself. Copying a CD is at present, ubiquitous enough, that assisting someone is probably on safe legal ground.

<comment><USER23> > EULAs and those kinds of agreements

I'm not talking about any EULAs - I'm trying to say that clicking the "speech- to-text" button is no different than opening a file in notepad, changing a few lines, then clicking save - you're instructing a program to do something. Would you say that notepad.exe/Microsoft altered the file "of it's own volition"?

<comment><USER26> I already addressed this in the previous comment. You might have missed it.

>> Amazon provides a service of its own volition, and he took advantage of that service.

>If the action that Amazon took could be proven to be "just as easily" done by the end user, then perhaps Amazons acting on behalf of the end user could be considered equivalent to the end user themselves performing that action.

>For e.g. If these is a fair use exemption for making a copy of a CD for a personal backup, then if I told my neighbors kid to do it for me, I think it could be considered equivalent as me doing it myself. Copying a CD is at present, ubiquitous enough, that assisting someone is probably on safe legal ground.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I like such features, but I can also see how, in the current legislation, the transcriptions are basically derivative works. Distributing them to the user without a license could very well be a copyright infringement.

I don't think Fair Use has a chance either: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#3._Amount_and_substan...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#3._Amount_and_substantiality)

> In general, the less that is used in relation to the whole, the more likely > the use will be considered fair.

If a whole book is transcribed, it's certainly not Fair use anymore.

<comment><USER29> Agreed, on the surface (and given current legislation/IP legal climate).

One thing that may also come into play - what about accessibility and the Americans with Disabilities Act? In this age of "slippery slopes be damned," I wouldn't necessarily be surprised to see someone file suit alleging that these sort of licenses - that limit scope only to audio - as a whole are infringing upon their rights under the ADA.

(Whether it would stand up or not is another question - anyone can file suit for anything, but there's no guarantee of a win. But it seems to me that Amazon might have a good defense here, just based on that idea.)

<comment><USER11> If you couldn't hear, why would you buy an _audiobook_ when there is a text version available? That's like suing a store because you can't walk up the stairs when they have a ramp available.

<comment><USER30> The disability doesn't have to be impaired hearing. Maybe you suffer from a reading disability and find the feature useful for practicing reading, or for some reason have trouble focusing on text or audio on its own, but can improve your comprehension by having both simultaneously.

<comment><USER11> If you have a reading disability, the last thing you want is an imperfectly transcribed, imperfectly punctuated text representation that would not be like what you would read normally.

Text to speech translation is a well known and well solved problem that computers have been able to do well since the mid 80s. Speech to text - not so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> In my opinion, this line is key: "One key difference, Audible says, is not being able to flip through pages, as users must wait for each line of text to be progressively generated as they're listening."

Also, it will help in increased sales, and that will in the end benefit the publishers as well.

No consumer will pay extra for this feature, so it's also in the publishers interest to accept and move on.

<comment><USER32> > No consumer will pay extra for this feature

While this might be true,

> so it's also in the publishers interest to accept and move on.

.. this doesn't follow, because the publisher's argument is that this feature existing reduces other revenue.

<comment><USER33> But people don't buy books so that they can see 6-7 words at a time at about 100wpm in sync with an audio track. What market is being usurped?

<comment><USER34> I imagine they think it will destroy the existing audiobook market eventually, if it becomes good enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> In the future, people will look at these cases and shake their heads in disbelief. I hope the judges do the right thing here.

The publishers seem too attached to their licensing schemes. Speech-to-text and text-to-speech are here to stay and this is not a surprise for anyone. Publishers should catch up.

<comment><USER36> Um... so... you do know authors make a good amount of their money nowadays from audiobooks, right? Ultimately this hurts authors more.

Edit: I'm getting downvoted because I think authors should get paid for their work? Wow. Okay, ive been noticing the nature of hn has been going towards entitlement bs, but this is ridiculous. Why dont you clock in to your job and offer not to get paid for that week, and still do the work. Oh no? I wonder why...

<comment><USER37> Um... so... you do know that blind people can't _see_ the printed page, right? This technology opens up reading these books to them out loud. Requiring an additional license for people with a disability is pretty disgusting. Right now, I can share any books I download with my spouse, children, etc. But if one of them was blind and I wanted to share with them, suddenly I'd need a different license just for them? That doesn't seem right. The author's not going to get any additional money out of us, we'll just not read their book.

<comment><USER38> FYI the feature being discussed goes the opposite direction: it takes audiobooks and transcribes them to text.

But your overall point still stands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This was the opposite 10 years ago...

[https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-retreats-on-kindles-text- to...](https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-retreats-on-kindles-text-to-speech- issue/)

</comment><comment><USER39> I would imagine one of Amazon's defenses is going to be that, actually, they are _required_ to do this by the ADA?

I imagine various blind organizations will be filing friend of the court briefs.

<comment><USER40> You mean deaf organizations, right?

In any case, I agree with you. Some people would say "If you're deaf, just buy the regular book, it's cheaper", but there's a significant use case that's not covered by that: imagine if you bought a large collection of audiobooks and then due to some medical problem, you lose your hearing (and yes, I have heard of people suddenly losing most of their hearing in their 30s). Amazon could be sued if they _didn 't_ have an accessible option.

Edit: Here's another use case: Someone who's HOH and can understand most of the audiobook but needs assistance with a few passages here and there.

<comment><USER41> I'm not even what people usually describe as hard of hearing, and I need to go back and rewatch a couple lines of TV with subtitles to get it. It's useful for all kinds of people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> « At the heart of the case will be a determination on the transformative nature of an AI-created audio transcription, and whether that constitutes a violation of the copyrights held on a written work. »

It seems to me that this shouldn't be what matters. Clearly Audible are distributing the books in a way protected by copyright, so they're relying on the permission they've paid the publishers for.

If the publishers have been giving out different licences for "audiobook" rights and "ebook" rights, that's not a distinction from copyright law, so deciding what's allowed should be a matter of interpreting the licence, not arguing about whether what they're doing is "transformative".

After all, the publishers could presumably write a licence that says Audible aren't allowed to distribute recordings of the work with background music added, and if a case about that went to court it shouldn't matter that the background music isn't itself any kind of copyright violation.

</comment><comment><USER43> I wonder how useful this feature would actually be to the average listener.

I usually listen to Audible when I can't or don't want to read (e.g. walking or on a commute).

<comment><USER44> It makes me wonder what's _really_ behind the suit.

Is it that the publishers are genuinely trying to protect their copyright and earnings - to ideally make consumers pay twice for different formats of the same content? (or similar content, given audiobooks also add some value via the narrator's interpretation). As a consumer, this kinda sucks - just as it did when --in theory-- one could be sued for downloading an MP3 of a song already purchased on CD, or even for ripping the audio off the CD oneself.

Or are they worried that this is Amazon's back-door route to pilot some wider usage of this technology, cleverly clothed (in this instance) within a pro- education, pro-child-literacy story?

<comment><USER45> > It makes me wonder what's really behind the suit.

I think there are a few things at play. The publishers were commoditize on the ebook switch. They are also facing more and more pressure as people question things like 'check outs' in an ebook world. Audiobooks are a growth area, and in very high demand. The publishers learned from the ebook shift, and now will go after anything that could possibly infringe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This article by Ars Technica [1] includes some commentary on two prior copyright decisions that may shed some light on how this case might proceed: Sony v. Universal (that declared the VCR legal) and Cartoon Network v. Cablevision.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/book- publishers-...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/book-publishers- sue-audible-to-stop-new-speech-to-text-feature/)

</comment><comment><USER47> I worked in Amazon's Audiobook space for a while.

The thing with Audiobooks is, Audible never bought a physical item from a publisher they have an licensing agreement, which puts then into a very different space. That agreement could be with 1\. Major Publishers Audiobook publishing group, for a recorded audiobook 2\. An independent audiobook publisher, for a recorded audiobook 3\. Directly with the author for rights to publish, for the rights to publish 4\. Directly with the publisher for rights to publish, for the rights to publish Further, there are Geographic rights publishers only have rights to publish in specific regions. A UK publisher could buy worldwide rights for ebook, print, audio from the author and then license US eBook/Print rights to one publisher and Audio rights to someone else.

The eBook publication rights usually are with the authors publisher, but they can be owned by another publisher (see Open Roads media), or the author.

The problems here is separate publishers have rights to the ebook and audiobook rights. Take Harry Potter, Tim Ditlow from Listening Library bought the audiobook rights for $15k before the book was "big". Ignore that his company was bought to keep this understandable. If you buy the audiobook and use this feature, the eBook publisher gets nothing which sets up some big conflicts.

Traditional publishers have been pushing for audiobook rights to be part of book deals for a while, the concerning thing I see here is that a response to this could kill the independent audiobook publishers which would take a lot of checks out of authors hands.

</comment><comment><USER48> I co-manage an ebook to audiobook conversion product [https://auditus.cc](https://auditus.cc). Spending a little time in this space and being an avid audiobook listener myself, I somehow feel that both sides are right on some level. The publishers' sole goal is to place as many physical copies as they can in people's hands. That is why you often hear things like "The feel of paper is what makes the book better", "this digital reading takes the feel away", etc. Now if you are listening to a book on Audible and you feel "ah! this book sounds pretty interesting and has some very notable points; I should read this rather than just listening to it!", you might end up buying a copy of it. But now since Audible has the exact text of the book, you can read it right there while also listening to it, which is obviously better because two faculties of your brain are working on the same thing thus you grasp faster. But clearly that's not good for the publisher at all, thus the frowning. On the other hand, audible's point that the A.I. generated text is not gonna be an exact replica of the hard copy might be the only and helpful justification they can present.

</comment><comment><USER49> This seems materially different than the reverse operation - taking a book and turning it into an audio experience. Doing so may diminish the book's experience because the AI voice / TTS may not convey the book correctly and could damage the user experience.

Captioning seems more like a facilitation of experience, using only the audio to add an additional layer on it. It's like saying the credits for a movie are copywrited and Amazon can't use that content for X-Ray (I'm aware they use IMBD and Amazon owns that).

It's certainly a gray area, but I feel the publishers are simply afraid that buying an audio book that is captioned may cannabalize their text-based book business, which seems disingenuous. The accessibility of a book of text is very different than captioned audio.

What if people can't hear well, but like the emotive layer added to captions in a reader's voice/pace, etc?

I can see uses for this that could be argued however - for instance, using the captions as a reading facilitator. The customer is using it like a book, with audio captions, not an audio book with hearing-impaired captions. Using the transcribed text to translate to a different language may also be infringing on copywrite as to provide an unofficially translated version of the text.

Assuming that there was an app on your phone that you could use to point at the Kindle readhing your audio book out loud and transcribing the text clearly isn't copywrite infringement, so the debate seems to be around Amazon providing this as an integrated service.

I think all that needs to be done is to allow the publisher to decide if that feature is enabled or not. Customers will obviously buy books that are captioned over ones that aren't, because you're getting more "content," and I can imagine publishers would charge more for this. Which is of course, what it ultimately comes down to - Money.

Publishers who didn't provide captions wouldn't get the business of those who want them, and those that don't care will make a decision on availability and price. Seems like Amazon could let their marketplace decide what people want, but they are in a legal position where they may consider it worth fighting. The trouble begins when you start asking the questions, "well, if Amazon wins, would publishers simply stop publishing their books on Amazon?" Then the monopoly question comes up.

I can see arguments both ways, and if the licensing terms to Amazon aren't clear, then Amazon should simply make them clearer and allow the marketplace participants fall where they may.

<comment><USER50> > but I feel the publishers are simply afraid that buying an audio book that > is captioned may cannabalize their text-based book business

It should. If I buy an audiobook version, the publisher should not expect me to buy the book in any other format. Thinking I will buy two copies is greedy.

<comment><USER51> Do you also feel entitled to the movie adaptation or graphic novelization?

If you bought the Rob Inglis reading of The Fellowship of the Ring, would you feel entitled to the BBC Full-Cast Dramatization?

<comment><USER52> I feel entitled to movie subtitles and will auto generate them using ml if there are none provided by the creator. Do you think that should be forbidden? That is basically what the book publishers argues for in this case and I believe it sets a horrible precedent.

<comment><USER51> I agree, but that's not the position of comment I'm replying to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Transcoding and post-processing should really be easy and legal, but DRM and anti-circumvention say otherwise.

Not to mention that fast-forward should not be deactivated when I want to skip an advertisement on a movie disc I purchased.

</comment><comment><USER54> Having a person read out a book, then using AI to convert that back into the original book feels like a very convoluted way of getting the text. Is this just a licensing thing? Is it to get the timing right of the captions?

<comment><USER55> How is having a book feed to you line by line (on a time you don't control) equivalent to "getting the text"? Also this surely can be considered a Usability feature for hearing impaired for example.

<comment><USER56> May be they are worried that this will lead to text leaking to public the minute it appears on such service... idk...

<comment><USER54> No, it's that since the text already exists (the written book), it seems overly complicated to transcribe what the voice actors are saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> This is a tough one.

On the one hand since this is producing something directly from the audio that you have already paid for, not allowing this seems like it would be another example of the whole right to repair/modify and "you don't really own it" issues.

On the other hand, I think it's reasonable to say that the AI provides capabilities that current laws didn't anticipate. I'm also sympathetic to the argument that someone else in this thread made its an example of Amazon profiting off of something that they didn't make at the expense of those who did make it.

<comment><USER58> >On the other hand, I think it's reasonable to say that the AI provides capabilities that current laws didn't anticipate.

I don't see that being the case. It changes the cost, but I was always able to have someone transcribe text for me. If I paid someone to listen to audio of objects I own and produce a copy of the words within it just for my consumption, then it is legal.

Even more so, I was always able to transcribe it into words myself. Be it pen and paper or be it a keyboard and hard drive, I was always able to take audio I own and transcribe it into written text for my own use. The AI provides a great reduction in difficult in doing this, but does not provide any new functionality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> A company sells audio books and provides its consumers with an app that interprets the speech in the audio books on the fly back into text to show on the screen: publishers claim copyright infringement.

A company sells an app that, given speech in any form by a user, including any audio book format, interprets the speech on the fly back into text to show on the screen: what's the difference? what do publishers claim in that case?

Please, enlighten me.

</comment><comment><USER60> I doubt audio is transcribed on each device rather than once in the cloud, but imagine for a moment... what if it was? Or if Amazon gave you access to a server to redo the transcription work in real time for each user? Would Amazon would be distributing the _capability to create a derivative work_ rather than (what is arguably) a _derivative work_?

Should Apple be prevented from distributing Logic Pro audio software because it could be theoretically used to create unauthorized derivative works from music downloaded from iTunes? Should Google/Alphabet be prevented from serving search results for "youtube-dl" because it is the distributor of copyrighted music videos? Should MEGA.nz be prevented from sending data whose copyright status it has no ability to determine by design? At what point does responsibility pass to the person clicking the "transcribe" or "remix" button?

(IANAL)

<comment><USER61> That approach (circumventing the specifics of the law through technical workarounds while still violating it in spirit) seems unlikely to succeed for the same reasons as Aereo: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Broadcasting_Cos.,_In...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Broadcasting_Cos.,_Inc._v._Aereo,_Inc.).

<comment><USER62> It is not law, it is license terms, and while license terms between companies can be ridiculously complicated, license terms for consumers in most jurisdictions generally can't be enforced beyond the very basics.

That is why the consumer technically doing the translation matters, they can't be bound by the inter-company license terms.

<comment><USER60> Unless, of course, the technology is painted as circumvention measures under DMCA, and all AI research into speech-to-text becomes illegal overnight.

*cries self to sleep that this is actually a possibility

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I just wish more ebooks were available through libraries. It seems like 50% of books I want to read aren't. The more I have used ebooks, the more I prefer them (for reading for pleasure).

</comment><comment><USER64> To turn it around:

Am I allowed to have someone (e.g. a parent or partner) read a book I own to me? Most definitely yes.

Am I allowed to hire someone (e.g. a nanny) to read the same to me. Still, probably yes.

Why wouldn't I be allowed to have a computer read it to me (regardless of whether I pay for having it read) as long as it's not a recording.

Now, turn it around from text-to-speach to speach-to-text and the same argument should apply.

</comment><comment><USER65> Considering how much of a tantrum they're throwing over this I'm amazed they didn't sue over the ability for ebook readers to convert the text into spoken words.

<comment><USER66> They made a stink about that a decade ago and Amazon backed down, making the feature publisher/author controlled, ahead of actually getting sued.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Ironically, this reminds me of a kindle-mindstorm copy machine that also uses OCR to copy legally books "rented" from Amazon. [https://techcrunch.com/2013/09/09/this-lego-robot-strips- kin...](https://techcrunch.com/2013/09/09/this-lego-robot-strips-kindle-drm- one-page-turn-at-a-time/)

Disclaimer: it's from my old supervisor

</comment><comment><USER68> I don't understand why you would like an audiobook. The bandwidth of a speaker is 100 words/min while reading is around 300 words/min, a significant difference that will compound in years over a lifetime. I never have the feeling I have enough time. Anyway If you can't innovate litigate.

<comment><USER51> > I don't understand why you would like an audiobook. The bandwidth of a > speaker is 100 words/min while reading is around 300 words/min

Since my words/min while I'm driving or at the gym is 0 for reading and 150 words/min (I listen at 1.25x or 1.5x), this makes complete sense to me.

> Anyway If you can't innovate litigate.

They are literally suing because Amazon is recreating the text versions of the audiobooks. Text was invented 5000 years ago. The only innovation is HOW Amazon is recreating text versions of the orignal books.

<comment><USER68> > Text was invented 5000 years ago. The only innovation is HOW Amazon is > recreating text versions of the orignal books.

Sounds like an innovation to me. When Amazon is going to do text-to-speech on normal books they are even going to put more pressure on the publishing business.

<comment><USER51> Inventing a new type of printing press doesn't give you the right to print copies of books without a copyright license. This is an innovative printing press.

But I'm pretty sure you understood my original point.

<comment><USER68> I understand your point of view but I have a different opinion.

It is ridiculous to expect people to pay the same price for a digital book as the printed version.

The distribution costs are not only a fraction, the business risk in publishing was originally ending up with an obsolete stock of books.

Publishers are profiting as much as Amazon from these new printing presses.

Sounds like an industry with a business model begging for disruption.

Would be awesome if I was able to actually lend out ebooks to friends with a similar restriction as with a physical book.

That's innovation, adding value to the customers experience and securing business survival.

<comment><USER69> From what I understand from someone in the industry, the digital version does take non-insignificant effort to format and meta-tag the literature according to the ebook formatting appropriately. Furthermore, the risk for the publishing company still exists, because editing, marketing, formatting, and cover-creation is still something that ebooks need and still costs money to produce.

In other words, the idea that digital books should cost significantly less than a printed book doesn't account that digital books require similar amounts of effort and labor, plus additional formatting labor.

 _" Sounds like an industry with a business model begging for disruption."_

This already exists in the form of wattpad and other self-publishing mediums. There are plenty of authors who make a living off of these mediums. But it's a different ball game and requires someone to manage their author career like a business, not as a traditional writer. (hiring an editor, a cover-producer, and doing one's own marketing) Thus, it's not really something that authors are generally enamored by.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> That particular horse was never broken to begin with, much less in anyone's barn.

fbreader has a tts plugin, and Android has many utilities to convert between different formats. I sometimes use TextAloud (with Paul16, the best TTS voice imo) on my PC, to make audiobooks for myself.

</comment><comment><USER71> So if I employ a secretary to take dictation and play the recording to him or her and read the text as it is typed (or written as shorthand if you will) would the same publishers claim that I have somehow violated their 'rules'?

<comment><USER72> If someone (e.g. that secretary) listens to an audiobook and transcribes it on a typewriter or in shorthand, then that's quite clearly creating a copy of the protected work on a durable medium, which is _exactly_ the thing for which copyright law states that this is the exlusive right of the copyright owner. It's not even an edge case, it's the core of that law - the result of a person transcribing the (audio)book is either a copy or a derivative work, both of which require the copyright owner's permission.

In certain cases fair use or other exceptions (depending on jurisdiction) might permit the transcribing itself for personal use, but distributing that transcript to others is definitely a violation.

<comment><USER71> So if I make a copy in my own hand for my wife to read that is also a violation?

<comment><USER72> Well, it's obviously very unlikely to be prosecuted, so the practical answer is that noone would care.

There are also some provisions for e.g. backups or accessibility (which vary between jurisdiction as these details aren't a part of the worldwide copyright conventions) that might apply in certain situations that stretch the scenario of "for my wife to read" a bit.

But yes, if you had a book and made a handwritten copy so that you could have your wife read it while (for example) you read the original, then the legal answer is that you're technically prohibited to do that without explicit permission from the copyright owner; and if the copyright owner finds out and really cares, they _could_ succeed in suing you for that action.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Let me get this straight, if Amazon hired a reader to sit in class to read the book it is ok, so then amazon should build a robot reader that sits there turns pages and reads the text with it's eyes and speaks it.

</comment><comment><USER74> > a distinction between a newly created piece of text composed using AI, based > on an audio recording, and the potentially near-identical text version of > the book the audiobook was created from

How is transcribing audio book "a newly created piece of text" ? This is another instance of a corp trying to use authors contents without actually paying for it (first being google AMP) in the name of experience.

Amazon's justification seems to be:

> Amazon says its transcriptions may contain errors and are not intended to be > complete recereations of the text version of a book.

Really, what does this have to do with anything ? A thief claiming ownership because they didn't steal everything at once ?

<comment><USER75> If I buy the audio book does it make sense that I am allowed if I want to write on a piece of paper what I hear?

How about type it?

How about using some voice-to-text software that I have?

<comment><USER74> Yes, you do it for yourself. Thats fair use. Now you begin to sell it, thats an issue.

And to think amazon is "surprised and disappointed by this action" does not seem the case. They are definitely trying to make themselves look charitable because of "educational purpose".

<comment><USER56> So if they create a separate free app and inside it will allow to load books from Audible and transcribe them - you won't have any issue with it?

<comment><USER74> > My contract is crystal clear that the only rights conveyed to Audible are > for voice recording and playback. The rights to reproduce text in any way > are specifically withheld

The original creator has issues with it. And if I was the content creator, I probably would have.

<comment><USER56> The comment, under which we have this discussion, gives it very specific context: where will you draw the line in the range of tools to transform audio for fair use.

Why would you consider pen+pencil and free app to transcribe audio to text different in terms of copyright infringement? Does Audible charge you more to use this feature?

What I see here is an attempt to dictate ways in which I can use book I already purchased - i.e. limit my rights.

What I also see: a bunch of companies that are trying to squeeze more juice from the market, which they are not even willing to serve in the first place, because they, being experts in the book market, couldn't figure out that market needs this feature, while a bunch of IT geeks, did.

<comment><USER56> Will add just one last point on humane business practices: if publisher sold me the book so well that I decided to buy one of the most expensive forms of its distribution - he should feel lucky and fuck off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Let me get this straight...

1) Take a book

2) Record someone reading it out-loud.

3) Use a robot to listen to the words and write them down as a book.

Nice example to use when teaching 'Lean'. Let me just draw the value stream...

<comment><USER33> But it's not being written down as a book. It's being transcribed on-the-fly. The user can only see the words as they are being read right now.

Audible argues that the critical competitive advantage of a book is to see lots of words per page, being able to flip to any page you want, and to read at the speed of your inner voice. Their feature does none of those things, so it can't usurp the market for books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Hopefully Amazon wins

</comment><comment><USER78> This is ridiculous and just publishers trying to money-grab.

It's about _accessibility_.

E-books should be able to be read aloud text-to-speech, and audiobooks should be able to show captions speech-to-text. Period.

And neither replaces the other. Text-to-speech has none of of the nuance or author/celebrity/actor voices, and speech-to-text is only displaying snippets (not pages) and audiobooks can sometimes have different/extra content than the printed book anyways.

</comment><comment><USER79> How are people on Amazon/Audible's side here? They're trying to use AI to get around copyright law, to produce the text of the book without a license to the text of the book. Their argument is that because they're using AI to do it, it won't be an exact replica. So they're saying because it's an inferior rip-off, they don't have to pay the IP holders. What nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER80> Is title wrong? It's should be text to speech right

<comment><USER81> The title is correct. The issue is about creating captions (text) from audio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> Slippery slope being a thing, a ruling here has the potential to affect YouTube as well, since they run automated captions on videos. I'd be surprised if Google didn't step in an offer up an opinion in support of Amazon.

<comment><USER26> Hmm.. has anyone ever been sued for adding captions? I don't see how they would.. as far as the end user is concerned, the captions are embedded into the video, are not a separate performance or a product. Not exactly analogous to audiobook vs ebook.

<comment><USER82> Captions is exactly what's being offered though. Amazon is not providing an ebook, they're providing captions in-sync with the audiobook.

The difference between an audiobook and a video is pretty small in a significant portion of YouTube content.

<comment><USER26> The difference is that audio-books is a separate product category with its own pricing. Embedding text in a video is quite different IMHO...

<comment><USER83> If Amazon added an animation to the existing audiobook content - making it a video - and then added captions would that be OK?

As the GP said, there's quite a few youtube videos with a completely static background where the content is the speaker's words.

<comment><USER26> >If Amazon added an animation to the existing audiobook content - making it a video - and then added captions would that be OK?

AFAIK, they would have to obtain prior permission from the copyright owner before re-distributing a modified version of the copyrighted work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> > The case happens to have a strong analog to a former Amazon publishing > controversy a decade ago, when the company tried to launch a text-to-speech > feature for its Kindle platform that would effectively do what Amazon > Captions does today, but in reverse.

> Publishers at the time were enraged, accusing Amazon of trying to trample on > the nascent audiobook market and the licensing rights that publishers > believed would help it become a thriving business. Amazon eventually caved > in that regard, allowing publishers to disable the Kindle text-to-speech > feature after a massive outcry from the US Authors Guild.

Sooooo.... If this is illegal, is reading a physical book aloud to your kid (or a class) illegal? That feels like a very close parallel.

Or is it the act of automating the action that makes it illegal?</comment>


Report: Beats Music will become a default iOS app in 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/11/report-beats-music-will-become-a-default-ios-app-in-2015/ <comment><USER2> First Apple pushes U2 and Bono on everyone. And now they are pushing Beats on everyone?</comment>


Obama to propose $10-a-barrel oil tax - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2016/02/obama-oil-tax-budget-000038 <comment><USER2> Yes, and coal too, please. This is most of what we need to do.

</comment><comment><USER3> Typical lib -- tax and spend, but oblivious of the impact. This won't effect the rich or middle class, but will severely impact the poor and those just scraping by (many new ones under his watch). Aren't libs the ones who claim they are looking out for the poor? Not so much...

</comment><comment><USER4> Why such small thinking? Why not a $100 a barrel tax. Hell, we could pay off the national debt with a $1000 a barrel tax, right?

</comment><comment><USER5> This could be a well thought out policy designed to combat cheap oil. Which will likely hover at a 30$ level well into 2017. Pushing the adoption of renewables which might lull would be great.</comment>


These charts show why Apple's big bet on services just doesn't make any sense - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-services-macquarie-schachter-slowdown-google-app-store-music-2018-12 <comment><USER2> Paywalled.</comment>


Is screen time good or bad? It's not that simple - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/14/turns-out-the-science-saying-screen-time-is-bad-isnt-science/ <comment><USER2> "Screen time" != "Screen time".

That's my main problem with all this "screen time is bad" stuff.

There's a huge difference between a kid spending 2 hours playing Flappy Bird and spending 2 hours playing with an educational app, or drawing/painting in an app, or watching tutorials on YouTube.

It's like saying "time at the park is bad for you" because some kids go to the park to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol.

Screen time isn't bad for kids. Parents not controlling what kids DO on the screens is bad for kids. It's all just another convenient thing for parents to point at and blame for their lazy parenting.

Moderate what your kids do, push them towards using screens and technology in educational and beneficial ways that stimulate their imagination and creativity, control the amount of time they spend sedentary, and teach them that like all things in life, balance and variety are important.

(Parent of 2 kids, who get unlimited access to TV, game consoles, and a tablet, and would much rather play Lego)

<comment><USER3> It's hard to generalize too much about screen time. It is almost universally bad, especially for kids, and should be kept to a minimum. Gadgets nowadays provide an unlimited stream of stimulation, novelty, and dopamine hits. No child can resist that, which is why the "lesser evils" like education apps are still "gamified" to have any chance of keeping a kid's attention. The result is that kids from an early age are growing up addicted to dopamine and the internet. It's not much different from fat kids already being addicted to junk food from an early age, it's just not as visible -- and both situations will be very difficult to change during the individual's life.

Really, you just have to spend some time with the current generation of children to see how disastrous technology has been. Their brain chemistry depends on constant outside stimulation, and anything else is boring.

Also, if you think you can effectively police what your kids do and see on the internet, you are sorely mistaken.

<comment><USER4> Whilst I agree it's hard to generalise and one shouldn't.

Now I'm a father of a 3 year old, I'm seeing differences in screen time with other parents/kids.

There's two kinds of parents, ones that pay attention to what their kids are doing, and those who don't.

We're almost all children of Boomers, who was raised with unfettered access to Television. Our boomer parents allowed some of us unfettered access to the early internet, video games, and television. Some of us were told to get outside and play. I certainly remember that some of my friends had restrictions on Games/TV/Etc, and some friends had no restrictions.

Most if not all of the fear mongering about Screen Time is coming from Boomers, not Gen X/Y.

That said.. I can easily separate the two parent's when it comes to screen time by telling them how bad letting their kids watch Youtube unmonitored is. The parents who monitor what their kids do will agree with me, the parents who don't monitor will disagree with me "Ohh its fine whatever".

The OP is right, the problem isn't Screen Time... it's content.

We have a rule in our house, no screen unless it's important, and if it should be shared.. So if my wife gets a text, and we're all playing, she tells us "Oh i got a text message from this person, I'm going to read it and reply". It involves everyone.

If my daughter is doing something, we do it with her. All her apps are educational and I've run them through my parents who are teachers with over 30+ years experience.

The problem is content, not screens.

Reality is those kids are going to grow up in a future where screens are always around. We'd like to think we're teaching them that screens are OK, as long as you include others in what you're doing.. So that my daughter doesn't become anti-social.

<comment><USER2> Couldn't have said it better myself. We have a strict list of apps and games that are allowed, but they basically get unfettered access to those ones. Nothing with ads or microtransactions, no mindless games, no YouTube at all unless we scraped a specific channel with youtube-dl to filter the crap. They have plenty of stuff to choose from and never get bored. Most the time they'd rather go play outside in the cubby or with the Lego anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The correct answer is we don't know. In other words we rolled out a technology and now we're conducting a giant science experiment on ourselves where it's possible that the consequences are extremely harmful, such as producing a generation that's going to suffer from all kinds of mental and physical issues through lack of exercise, insomnia and poor social skills. That compounded by a medical industry that likes to throw drugs at symptoms rather than solve the underlying causes.

It could go the other way of course and lead to a generation that's smarter and more capable than ever before, thanks to being exposed to far more collective knowledge and wisdom than any before them.

Probably it will be some of both but to put it in context I think it's always good to remember radium water ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor)) as a cautionary tale of how blind faith in progress and technology can go wrong.

<comment><USER6> While I agree that we should be cautious, this is more or less the same arguments that where used against industrialization, cars, trains, children reading books, movies, vaccines, etc?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well I think this depends on what you're measuring as the impact of screen time.

There are some negative effects of screen time that are not in doubt. It leads to a sedentary life style, this has negative impacts on fitness and health. It also isn't great for your eyes to maintain the same focal distance for long periods of time.

<comment><USER8> The same is true for reading a book but you don't see people up in arms about that.

<comment><USER9> I've never found myself unable to stop reading a book even when I knew I should be doing something else. Like now. I should be getting some sleep but instead I'm reading/commenting about screen time. I think, mobile devices especially, are addictive in ways that prior media was just not. I often feel the way I felt after a few months of being a regular smoker - not really getting much pleasure from being online and knowing that I'm not really learning anything useful, but not really able to stop either. (I should note I did quit smoking entirely shortly after getting to that point though)

<comment><USER10> I have certainly had the same experience with a book.

<comment><USER11> Yeah but how long does it take to read a book? Even if someone was binging on War and Peace, or The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one is addicted only for a few weeks or months at most- the internet is infinite.

<comment><USER9> I guess the differentiating factor is the instant availability. You can go to a library pick out one book, and unless it's exceptional you'll only be able to read it for some amount of time before you feel like you need to do something else. With the internet, the "something else" can still be the internet.

And with a book, if you're truly binging on it, then youll be done in several days at most for the longer books. And, chances are, you won't be going back to the library for another book right away and, if you do, the next one probably won't be as bingeworthy.

I guess I can see the analogy but it's still like comparing nicotine to caffeine.

<comment><USER12> > _I guess I can see the analogy but it 's still like comparing nicotine to > caffeine._

Nitpick, but nicotine != cigarettes, and nicotine alone isn't that (if at all) habit-forming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I feel like I hit the sweet spot in life (I'm 42 now) to be able to appreciate what computers can do for me while not getting trapped in the cycle of dopamine craving content that's pushed on us now.

Back in 1987, to play games or do anything fun on a computer, you had to know how to use the computer. That would lead you down a rathole of technical questions that had the pay off of getting a game working, but also taught you stuff that was really useful. Today's devices are all about instant gratification, so kids have gotten into the habit of expecting that. I struggle mightily with my 10 year old son now with him understanding that not all things we do can have an immediately positive feedback loop. I don't want him to loose interest in rewarding things just because their is a barrier that needs to be overcome.

So my criticism of screen time is mainly in how our children (and adults) choose to use their time. Binge watching videos on youtube about their favorite game is not the same quality content as building a Raspberry Pie to create an emulation station. Both are focused on gaming, but one teaches you problem solving and hardware/software skills.

</comment><comment><USER14> Not sure this analogy works but here goes...

Could you see it as what the car industry did for transportation, the tech industry is doing for our mental infrastructure? Setting up a private car infrastructure was a gigantic experiment with unforeseen (or were they really?) consequences to pollution, noise, the way cities were built/grew and so on. The initial idea was not much criticized, we have only been fine tuning the technology (safer cars, electric cars, better roads, etc). And today we are doing the same experiment but with our minds. And it's not going to change, we're just going to fine tune it. When your products are infrastructure you are safe. So screen/software makers don't really care about the debate of screen time. It's a debate about how much time and what you do on your screen and not so much how we should live our lives (we are already living a lot of our lives through screens!).

</comment><comment><USER15> Meta-analyses aren't science, either. They're hardly more than commentary as it's very easy to interpret many studies in a particular way.

<comment><USER16> Out of curiosity how does one arrive at that cognitive veiwpoint? I can't seem to find my way there.

If we assume it's true for arguments sake then you can't read a meta-analysis of meta-analyses in order to reach that conclusion because such an act wouldn't be deemed a legitimate source of information...

So how do you get there? What's the path to seeing things from that specific angle?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Correct. Screen Time is an Apple product, and an invention of marketing.

The reality is that human behavior is drastically modified by mobile devices, the cloud and ubiquitous wireless broadband.

You couldn't escape if you tried. The frogs are boiling.</comment>


Early Nintendo programmer worked without a keyboard - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/04/the-first-kirby-game-was-programmed-without-a-keyboard/ <comment><USER2> > As reported by Game Watch (and wonderfully translated by the Patreon- > supported Source Gaming)

I know this should be the default and not deserve a compliment, but I really appreciate it when an article on a website does proper sourcing.

<comment><USER3> It's always nice to know about the little ways passionate organizations like Source Gaming are doing their part to deliver information around the world.

<comment><USER4> And for the people who want to read their original article about this (with the full translation), here's the link:

[http://sourcegaming.info/2017/04/19/kirbys-development- secre...](http://sourcegaming.info/2017/04/19/kirbys-development-secrets/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Sakurai, who was 20 at the time, says he simply thought this keyboard-free > programming environment was "the way it was done," and he coded an entire > functional test product using just the trackball.

Maybe ten years from now, I can recount the horrid tales of writing code in notepad that didn't even have Ctrl+S shortcut, let alone code highlighting. :) Joking aside, I revere veteran programmers who wrote without keyboards, and coded mostly in assembly but I can't help think if it was pretty normal because that's the way things were done at that time.

There is a opinion I hit on every now and then—of programming, especially web development, getting ridiculously easier compared to the past. It has, to a great extent, considering the tools and the computing power we have now, but the complexity of software is also pacing at the same speed, briskly consuming that efficiency. The real question that should be asked is: was programming in the past inordinately difficult when seen in perspective of software complexity the market demanded? Is software development easier today because the gain in programming efficiency is more than the complexity of software that needs to be made?

<comment><USER6> I think you'll find that the average programmer of decades ago would have been significantly more competent that the average programmer of today. Why? Because programming wasn't nearly as popular back then, so it was mainly people with genuine aptitude or interest in programming who pursued that path. These days, programming is more fashionable and quite a number of mediocre people have jumped on the bandwagon thus pulling down the average.

<comment><USER7> Programming has become one of the only paths towards a middle class life (as we've known middle class in the past). No one I know from college that doesn't work in IT makes enough money to be old-school middle class like I am.

<comment><USER8> ...you must not know many people then. There's lots of opportunity for a middle class life in non-it-related professions. Something I found pretty shocking after I left the sv bubble.

<comment><USER9> Such as?

<comment><USER8> Marketing, sales, numerous supporting jobs in entertainment, skilled trades and engineering, (as many mentioned) white collar food industry jobs, logistics, accounting, statistics, mediation, community builders, I could go on and on. So many diffierent types of jobs, even when you exclude all the shitty ones that make the world a shittier place, like low-information political shills and propagandists, (tiny conservative talk radio shows and online communities do decently, moderate and liberal not so much) junk and junk food marketers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is very cool. Constraints are definitely the mother of all creativity, even in indirect ways. This reminds me of my first few years of programming as a pre-teen, on a TI-82 calculator (I had no computer at home at the time), where I'd input code directly with the tiny keyboard. You didn't type keywords (if, else, etc.) directly - instead you would pick them from a menu system and the editor would insert them in your code. You could use the number keys as shortcuts in the menu system; after a while you'd develop pretty good muscle memory and type relatively fast on the machine. When I graduated to assembly, it was a whole other ordeal. I also remember drawing sprites for my game on graph paper, and then painstakingly inputting the coordinates for on pixels in the source.

It's funny how every programmer who got into programming before the age of ubiquitous laptops/tablets/phones/etc. has stories like that to tell; one of my old boss's favorite stories is deleting the boot sector accidentally while programming an old DOS machine, and having to rewrite by hand and from memory while the computer was still powered. When he restarted the machine, everything worked, which was pretty much a miracle.

On one hand I wonder if programmers who had to face this kind of drastic challenges end up having a stronger understanding of their craft and tooling compared to the new generation, learning languages and machines with very strong guard rails, never having to learn the deep insides of what they're working with; on the other hand, every generation bemoans the fact that the one before doesn't get things quite the way they do, but things usually turn out fine.

<comment><USER11> Whoa, that's interesting. Your description of the input scheme for the TI-82 sounds very similar to something I started building for a program editor meant to be used with motion sensors ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tztmgCcZaM4&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tztmgCcZaM4&feature=youtu.be&t=1m32s)).

My plan was to always present a 3x3 grid with cells containing whichever language constructs were available from the current cursor position: after selecting one, the cursor position updates, and the options available in the cells update.

I've tried to imagine using it many many times, but haven't been able to definitely conclude whether it would be usable or not...

<comment><USER12> You're basically talking about an IME or software keyboard.

For something similar to your idea, I'd suggest playing with the Japanese- language keyboard for iOS.

For a bit of background: The two main Japanese writing systems are syllabic—each character represents a consonant+vowel pair, with ~15 possible consonants and 5 possible vowels, though not all possible combinations of those exist.

So, instead of attempting to give you a ~70-key keyboard (wouldn't really fit on the screen), the standard Japanese IME for touchscreen devices instead displays one key per initial _consonant_ (indicated with the character you'd get by completing the syllable with an "a"-vowel.) Tapping the key neutrally picks said "[consonant]+a" character; swiping in each compass direction instead picks one of the four other vowel options. And holding down one of the keys displays the options as a little plus-shaped menu.

<comment><USER11> Interesting. Yes, that is very similar to what I had in mind. The ideal solution for typing in Japanese is slightly different though since the things you're specifying are always comprised of two parts, allowing the system to always be two-step. I think I would have to go with a sequences of taps, since the things being specified could have many parts.

Let's say you select "method definition", for instance. After that (assuming we're writing Java), you'd have to select an 'access modifier', 'return type', 'method name', and 0 - N 'method parameters', and so on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _As if the limited power wasn 't bad enough, Sakurai revealed that the Twin > Famicom testbed they were using "didn't even have keyboard support, meaning > values had to be input using a trackball and an on-screen keyboard." Those > kinds of visual programming languages may be fashionable now, but having a > physical keyboard to type in values or edit instructions would have probably > still been welcome back in the early '90s._

Leaving aside the contention whether visual programming languages have _ever_ been fashionable, the author has a very deformed view of programming if he thinks typing out code via an on-screen keyboard is the difference between traditional programming and "visual" programming.

</comment><comment><USER14> Something so tight and elegant about the construction of games back then. Just look at the sprite sheets. Nothing wasted.

I think it was Woz who said that an advantage of the generation of programmers who grew up in the 8 bit era was that they could have a mental model of the entire machine, which allowed them to squeeze out every last drop of performance and do some mind blowing things with very limited power by today's standards.

</comment><comment><USER15> Seemed like an interesting article, but while I was reading it disappeared from view and was replaced by a photo of a resort or something.

Oh well.

<comment><USER16> Ars used to be a decent computer-enthusiast website. A little less hardcore than anandtech or [H]ardOCP. Somewhat helpful forums, but often offtopic. Obsessed with water-cooling your overclocked Celerons. But that was 1.5e-1 centuries ago, before the Condé Nast acquisition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> My brain couldn't even grasp the thought of it, I read the title as "worked out with a keyboard" 5 times and expected to see some sort of crazy exercise equipment when I opened the article. I even thought that ugly trackball mouse was some kind of workout machine until I finally read the first paragraph. That had to really mess with his hand programming that way.

<comment><USER18> Ironically you are correct [0]. Sakurais health has become a bit of a meme in the Super Smash Bros. community over the last few years. I can't be 100% sure that his issues were related to track-ball-programming or not but I am sure it didn't help.

[0] [http://www.polygon.com/2013/2/27/4035046/why-masahiro- sakura...](http://www.polygon.com/2013/2/27/4035046/why-masahiro-sakurais-bum- right-arm-is-hindering-work-on-the-new)

<comment><USER17> Trackball for normal mouse use alone could play a big part. I really liked them but I haven't used one since the late 90's because the fatigue was very noticeable, especially on the top of my hand, my hands feel weird just thinking about using one again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Amazing dedication!

What struck me about this person's situation is: why didn't he and other engineers there work together and jerry-rig something with a PC to interact with the Twin Famicom and on-screen keyboard using the trackball's protocol?

Perhaps they eventually did!

</comment><comment><USER20> Most primitive system I ever programmed on had a hexadecimal number pad and an LED display. You punched in an address, hit "addr", and it showed the current value at that address. There were also "next" and "prev" buttons.

You could then enter a new value on the hex pad and hit "enter".

Once you were satisfied, you'd point the reset vector to your program, and hit "reset" to start the chip going.

</comment><comment><USER21> And employees complain today if they don't have a fridge stocked with free Jamba Juice!

<comment><USER22> Managers beg you "what can I put in the fridge?!" It's not a one way street because manager is just as fearful of losing engineers as engineers enjoy the perks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Blogspam. Source is [http://sourcegaming.info/2017/04/19/kirbys-development- secre...](http://sourcegaming.info/2017/04/19/kirbys-development-secrets/)

</comment><comment><USER24> I kinda thought the article was going to be about programmers that marked up a line printer output and handed it off to someone that keyed the changes into a line editor (or punchcards)

</comment><comment><USER25> You still can do it: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6eY73sLV0](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hB6eY73sLV0)

</comment><comment><USER26> I'll never complain about Centura again.

</comment><comment><USER27> Obligatory xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/378/](https://xkcd.com/378/)</comment>


Just the FAQs about Little Endian - <AUTHOR> https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/fe313521-2e95-46f2-817d-44a4f27eba32/entry/just_the_faqs_about_little_endian?lang=en <comment><USER2> > A software developer that has code manipulating data through pointer casting > or bitfields would not be able to simply recompile an application for one > endian mode to another.

Why wouldn't pointer casting work as is across compilations on opposite endianness?</comment>