Audible’s Planned Caption Service is Not Fair Use
Late last month, a group of publishers filed a complaint against Audible in the Southern District of New York asking the court to enjoin the audiobook distributor’s launch of a new audio-to-text transcription service. Though Audible has yet to file a response, a statement from the company—a subsidiary of Amazon since 2008—hints at a fair use defense based on the service’s supposed educational purpose. Unfortunately for Audible, its unauthorized reproduction, distribution, adaptation, and display of the publishers’ copyright-protected works is unlikely to survive a sound fair use analysis.
New Captioning Feature Infringes Publishers’ Rights
Audible is the world’s largest distributor of digital audiobooks and “spoken-word entertainment,” making available to its subscribers hundreds of thousands of audio programs based on works licensed from publishers, broadcasters, entertainers...