In 2009, Amazon announced a new feature for the Kindle. It could now use a text-to-speech program to read its customers’ e-books aloud in a sort of robotic monotone. This was and is pretty cool. But some publishers objected, claiming that this was tantamount to making an unauthorized audiobook. This is a weird theory of copyright—a bit like saying that allowing users to change the font in the book is the same as making an unauthorized large-print edition.
