Amazon Kindle 2G is only a couple of weeks old but that hasn’t stopped people from going after it. Authors Guild first brought up the text-to-speech issue the very same day Jeff Bezos introduced the new device. After a few days of going back and forth, Amazon finally decided to hedge its bets and minimize its legal risks by allowing publishers to disable Read-to-Me for their books. It was a setback for Kindle fans, but something we can live with.

One would think that was the end of the story. But the guys at Authors Guild have other plans, as CNET reports. The good people at Author Guild claim that large book publishers are to blame for this fiasco. I don’t doubt for a second that Authors Guild was not the only party applying pressure on Amazon, but these folks started the fire. Here is how Aiken (a copyright advocate) explained the situation:

It’s hard to get paid for your content online for digital uses. We have to get things right in these emerging markets. There has to be reasonable ways for authors and creators to get compensated.

You are absolutely right it’s hard. While the audio-book market is growing, you can’t expect folks to pay for mediocre productions. And you shouldn’t blame text-to-speech technology for your loss of sales. Audio-books are supposed to be high in quality, and text-to-speech software should be no real competition. Unfortunately, our legal system allows these entities to hinder innovation by objecting to everything, and that’s truly a shame as we need solutions and not lawsuits and threats.

At the end of the day, it all comes down to money. These guys saw a new gadget with text-to-speech technology, and they panicked. I wish these guys would come up with a solution as they seem to be raising problems most of the time. I still believe that Amazon should not have yielded here but let’s hope that’s the end of it.

Talk about having a short honeymoon. You thought Barack Obama had a short honeymoon? Think again. Amazon Kindle 2G is already taking heat for its innovative Read-To-Me feature. I get what Jeff Bezos was trying to accomplish by adding Read-To-Me feature to Kindle 2.0. The truth is we as a people are finding new ways to consume content. We want to watch video training programs instead of reading books. We want to listen to pod-casts and audio-books instead of reading blogs and regular books. So the Read-to-Me feature is not only a great accessibility feature, but it’s also allows us to multi-task more effectively. Now you can listen to your book and check you e-mail messages at the same time.

The problem? Authors Guild. I am sure those guys want to protect the work of folks who spend so much time to develop their works, but to even suggest that Amazon’s Read-To-Me feature makes audio-books out of e-books is simply ridiculous. The book is read by a computer program and in form or shape capable of topping the quality of a professionally composed audio-book. I am sure a lot of folks want to sue Amazon and make some quick cash, but you’ve got to have a better excuse to do that. I am all for protecting the work done by authors, composers, musicians, and everyone in between, but sometimes these silly laws get in the way of innovation. For ours and Amazon’s sakes, let’s hope there is no hefty lawsuit in the horizon.

What do you think? Who’s on the right side here?