Amazon Backs Down On Kindle’s Speech Function

“Publishers and authors now have the power to silence the Kindle 2 e-book reader. Amazon.com Inc. reversed course Friday on the device’s controversial text-to-speech feature, which reads digital books aloud in a robotic voice. The company gave rights holders the ability to disable the feature for individual titles. … [T]he Authors Guild had objected to the text-to-speech function, saying Amazon doesn’t have the right to essentially turn e-books into audio books.”