While the Text-to-Speech feature of the Amazon Kindle 2 was not a compelling reason I purchased the device, there are a large number of people who were influenced to buy the Kindle 2 because of it. Recently, the Author’s Guild attacked Amazon, requesting the immediate lockdown of the feature. The Author’s Guild posted their reasoning behind the request. Amazon has begun to comply with their request by granting publishers the ability to disable the Text-to-Speech feature for their corresponding Kindle-formatted eBooks. Some of these users can’t help but feel cheated that they will likely soon lose their ability to have their books read to them.

I can understand that this is happening because Amazon’s content providers (the publishing industry) are providing the pressure to disable the feature, and if they don’t comply they risk losing the ability the distribute the content altogether. This would obviously cripple the platform for worse than not complying, because after all, who would buy a Kindle from a book store who has no content?

However, my big issue with this is that Amazon should have taken care of any legal structuring or agreements before releasing a product that uses a feature that might be questionably against the policy of their partners. The argument that Amazon didn’t have the foresight to see this possibly happen is invalid because their legal team is very adept to copyright and publishing laws. This is certainly a huge oversight. Amazon’s assumption that Text-to-Speech would be legal is also fair though, because a certain computer platform (made by a company named after a fruit that grows on trees) has had Text-to-Speech as a native feature of the operating system for well over a decade.

Moving forward, let’s hope that Amazon finds ways to encourage publishers to allow the feature. It’s definitely not a deal breaker for me, but in the last few days I’ve had quite a few people tell me they’re reconsidering their purchase when they see my Kindle. They’re attributing their change of heart to the waffling availability of the feature, and a few outstanding issues (such as the inability to organize content on the Home screen into folders).

Is a missing text-to-speech feature a show stopper for you? What are your thoughts behind this?