SEATTLE, Feb 27, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- 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.
Furthermore, we ourselves are a major participant in the professionally
narrated audiobooks business through our subsidiaries Audible and
Brilliance. We believe text-to-speech will introduce new customers to
the convenience of listening to books and thereby grow the
professionally narrated audiobooks business.
Nevertheless, we strongly believe many rightsholders will be more
comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver's
seat.
Therefore, we are modifying our systems so that rightsholders can decide
on a title by title basis whether they want text-to-speech enabled or
disabled for any particular title. We have already begun to work on the
technical changes required to give authors and publishers that choice.
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 believe many will decide that it is.
Customers tell us that with Kindle, they read more, and buy more books.
We are passionate about bringing the benefits of modern technology to
long-form reading.
About Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), a Fortune 500 company based in Seattle,
opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995 and today offers Earth's
Biggest Selection. Amazon.com, Inc. seeks to be Earth's most
customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything
they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the
lowest possible prices. Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of
unique new, refurbished and used items in categories such as Books;
Movies, Music & Games; Digital Downloads; Electronics & Computers; Home
& Garden; Toys, Kids & Baby; Grocery; Apparel; Shoes & Jewelry; Health &
Beauty; Sports & Outdoors; and Tools, Auto & Industrial.
Amazon Web Services provides Amazon's developer customers with access to
in-the-cloud infrastructure services based on Amazon's own back-end
technology platform, which developers can use to enable virtually any
type of business. Examples of the services offered by Amazon Web
Services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple
Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon SimpleDB, Amazon Simple Queue
Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS),
Amazon Mechanical Turk and Amazon CloudFront.
Amazon and its affiliates operate websites, including www.amazon.com,
www.amazon.co.uk,
www.amazon.de,
www.amazon.co.jp,
www.amazon.fr,
www.amazon.ca,
and www.amazon.cn.
As used herein, "Amazon.com," "we," "our" and similar terms include
Amazon.com, Inc., and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates
otherwise.
Forward-Looking Statements
This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning
of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the
Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Actual results may differ significantly
from management's expectations. These forward-looking statements involve
risks and uncertainties that include, among others, risks related to
competition, management of growth, new products, services and
technologies, potential fluctuations in operating results, international
expansion, outcomes of legal proceedings and claims, fulfillment center
optimization, seasonality, commercial agreements, acquisitions and
strategic transactions, foreign exchange rates, system interruption,
indebtedness, inventory, government regulation and taxation, payments
and fraud. More information about factors that potentially could affect
Amazon.com's financial results is included in Amazon.com's filings with
the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent Annual
Report on Form 10-K and subsequent filings.
SOURCE: Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc.
Amazon Media Hotline, 206-266-7180
