'With this new level of control, publishers and authors will be able to decide for themselves whether it is in their commercial interests to leave text-to-speech enabled. 'We have already begun to work on the technical changes required to give authors and publishers that choice,' Amazon said in the written release. 'Nevertheless, we strongly believe many rightsholders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver's seat.'Īmazon said it is making modifications to allow those holding rights to written works to decide on a title-by-title basis whether to allow Kindle 2 devices to read passages aloud using text recognition software. 'Kindle 2's experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given,' Amazon said late Friday in an announcement posted online.

The US Authors Guild had warned that the new Kindle feature could pose a 'significant challenge' to the publishing industry and hinted at possible legal action by saying they were studying the matter closely.

Kindle read aloud