Piers Beckley
piersb.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy
Piers Beckley
@piersb.wandering.shop.ap.brid.gy
Writer and Software Engineer

🌉 bridged from ⁂ https://wandering.shop/@piersb, follow @ap.brid.gy to interact
Kindle’s New Gen AI-Powered “Ask This Book” Feature Raises Rights Concerns
In a recent press release, Amazon noted that some new features were coming to Kindle. > We’re adding new AI-powered reading features that preserve the magic of reading on Kindle. Story So Far lets you catch up on the book you’re reading—but only up to where you’ve read without any spoilers. For our endlessly curious readers, Ask this Book will let you highlight any passage of text while reading a book and get spoiler-free answers to questions about things like a character’s motive or the significance of a scene. The lead article in today’s _Publishers Lunch_ (PL) is all about Ask This Book, which went live in the Kindle iOS app earlier this week (it’ll be rolled out on all devices and Android OS in 2026). Amazon’s breezy announcement of the feature’s debut describes it as “your expert reading assistant, instantly answering questions about plot details, character relationships, and thematic elements without disrupting your reading flow.” You can highlight a phrase or sentence, type a question into a search box, and AI will generate an answer “right on the page.” There’s a little video to demonstrate the process. That might sound inoffensive enough. But as PL points out, Ask This Book is, in effect, “an in-book chatbot. You ask any question about the book, and a generative AI process provides you answers.” Which would seem…hmmm…to raise some rights concerns. Questioned about this, Amazon was not prepared to elaborate, but did note that Ask This Book is not optional for rightsholders: > Our query about what rights the company was relying upon to execute the new feature was not answered, nor did they elaborate on the technical details of the service and any protections involved (whether to prevent against hallucinations, or to protect the text from AI training). > > Asked whether rightsholders could elect to withdraw from the program, [Amazon spokesperson Ale] Iraheta wrote, “To ensure a consistent reading experience, the feature is always on, and there is no option for authors or publishers to opt titles out.” Most of the literary agents and publishing executives PL reached out to for comment were not aware that Ask This Book was live–and some were not aware of it at all. PL quotes one publisher who echoes the rights concerns, noting the need for “both a legal and technical review to understand the process and protections Amazon is deploying, as well as the rights they are relying on to do this in the first place.” It’s not the first time Amazon has rolled out a new feature without adequate notice or consideration of the rights involved. > For those with long memories it will recall the early days of Kindle, when in early 2009 the company rolled out a text to speech feature that would read aloud ebooks, trampling on audio rights for the sake of being able to do so. At the time, Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener insisted “these are not audiobooks. Text to speech is simply software that runs on devices and reads content.” Simply software. > > Pushback from rightsholders was considerable and immediate, and Amazon quickly conceded to make the feature optional, “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.” They denied any infringement, claiming the “experimental text-to-speech feature is legal: no copy is made, no derivative work is created, and no performance is being given.” Yet they acknowledged, “Nevertheless, we strongly believe many rightsholders will be more comfortable with the text-to-speech feature if they are in the driver’s seat.” Will there be similar pushback on Ask This Book? As PL points out, “many people would deem the outputs of generative AI analyzing a particular copyright work as the very embodiment of a derivative work (or simply a direct infringement).” Agents and publishers broadly regard anything to do with generative AI as a separate right reserved solely to the author, and publishing contracts are increasingly addressing this issue. The primary focus has been on preventing unpermissioned AI training, but with the technology embedding itself at warp speed in all aspects of the book business, the rights implications are expanding just as fast…especially where, as here, they sneak in under the radar. ### Share this: * Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Click to share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads * Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit * Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky * Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr * Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Click to print (Opens in new window) Print * Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest * Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp * More * * Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram * Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X * ### Like this: Like Loading... ### _Related_
writerbeware.blog
December 24, 2025 at 12:04 AM
Reposted by Piers Beckley
My policy of declining when billionaires offer me a ride on their private jets to visit their secluded Caribbean underage sex islands is starting to pay off.
December 23, 2025 at 11:46 PM
Reposted by Piers Beckley
December 21, 2025 at 9:14 PM
I might well have left Labour and joined the Lib Dems if at any point in the last ten years they had said “Yeah. We fucked up. Should never have gone into coalition with the Tories. Not gonna do that again. Once more, sorry.”

Floating voter with Green tendencies right now […]
Original post on wandering.shop
wandering.shop
December 23, 2025 at 1:56 AM
Reposted by Piers Beckley
How do you summarize how unsafe orbit is? This is where I get to tell you about my new favourite forced astronomy acronym, which I spent quite a while thinking about.

We needed a metric. I originally wanted to do something like "Kessler Countdown" or "Kessler Clock" but this isn't a countdown […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
December 11, 2025 at 2:23 PM
Reposted by Piers Beckley
I see a lot of people celebrating violence against Andrew Tate and Jake Paul and really we should be better than...

Oh who am I kidding get Tommy Robinson in a ring with Oleksandr Usyk.
December 21, 2025 at 8:16 PM
The Antonan Chronicles #3 has been uploaded (available worldwide on Amazon on 27th December for all of your post-Christmas post-family getting-away-from-it-all needs)...

https://books.fatpigeons.com/d4ystd6tpa

Which means I am now officially on holiday.

Hurrah! Merry Christmas one and all!
A battle tears apart the plains of a beautiful and deadly fantasy world
Mark Rider has been torn from his home on Earth to the planet Antona, an uncountable number of years in the far future. Here the two city-states of Ruat and Thirsk clash in battle - and Mark finds himself in the middle of the fight to save the Princess of Thirsk, the woman he has come to love. The Crystal Sword, a 15,000 word short read, is the third part of The Swords of Antona, a new Science Fantasy novel in the grand tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E Howard, and Michael Moorcock.
books.fatpigeons.com
December 20, 2025 at 5:23 PM
One day, I will write my Interceptor fanfic.

Yes, this is a threat.
December 20, 2025 at 2:29 PM
Reposted by Piers Beckley
If you find the fediverse useful, don’t forget to support your instance (assuming they accept support). While the software is free, running instances is far from it. I am glad to be part of the community and want to see it continue on as a viable alternative. Thank you all for being here and I […]
Original post on infosec.exchange
infosec.exchange
December 18, 2025 at 7:52 PM
Heard Fairytale Of New York in a pub tonight, and it had Kirsty singing “You scumbag, you maggot / You’re cheap and you’re haggard”.

See? It’s not difficult.
December 18, 2025 at 11:35 PM
Trying to buy something from the Robert Dyas website.

If there is a checkout button on the checkout page, I am _fucked_ if I can find it. Tried on two different browsers. I literally cannot give them my money.

Seems to me like a particularly bad User […]

[Original post on wandering.shop]
December 18, 2025 at 12:15 PM
Reposted by Piers Beckley
it's truly amazing what LLMs can achieve. we now know it's possible to produce an html5 parsing library with nothing but the full source code of an existing html5 parsing library, all the source code of all other open source libraries ever, a meticulously maintained and extremely comprehensive […]
Original post on mastodon.social
mastodon.social
December 17, 2025 at 3:06 AM
Reposted by Piers Beckley
The Internet is already dead.... I got to talk to a number of queer and/or punk young people (teens and 20s) who are fairly prodigious makers of media stuff, all print and music, are clever with phones and computers, but don't put their stuff on the net.

Not only has it become difficult and […]
Original post on tldr.nettime.org
tldr.nettime.org
December 15, 2025 at 4:54 AM
"Why don't they bring headphone connectors back?"

BECAUSE THE TECHNOLOGY IS ALMOST 150 YEARS OLD AND IS A BIT SHIT.

Sheesh.

If you want to live in the past, just buy a converter. They're like two or three quid.
December 15, 2025 at 11:16 AM
Last day to get a free copy of my short read "The Crystal Sword" in exchange for signing up to my newsletter. (You can unsubscribe directly afterwards if you like, I won't be offended.)

It's a Planetary Romance - swordfighting, adventure, distant planet, beautiful princess. All that sort of […]
Original post on wandering.shop
wandering.shop
December 15, 2025 at 10:59 AM
Reposted by Piers Beckley
@piersb @troublewithwords TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO BE JOLLY
December 14, 2025 at 10:16 PM
The more I think about it, the more I think that the True Meaning Of Whamageddon has been lost

Once you start deliberately avoiding Christmas songs, you're denying yourself joy.

Klingons enter battle knowing they may enter Sto'Vo'Kor should chance go against them, and welcome the possibility […]
Original post on wandering.shop
wandering.shop
December 14, 2025 at 9:19 PM
TONIGHT I DINE IN WHAMHALLA!!!
December 14, 2025 at 9:12 PM
Reposted by Piers Beckley
Just to be clear: should I have the terrible misfortune to be killed in a mass shooting, please feel free to politicize the hell out of it. And go ahead and do so immediately. No time will be “too soon”.
December 14, 2025 at 4:37 PM
Reposted by Piers Beckley
Excellent damn question (andfa very fine write up that actually gets into the history and larger issues)

Why Is Warner Bros. for Sale at All? prospect.org/2025/12/10/w...
Why Is Warner Bros. for Sale at All? - The American Prospect
Its product has never been more critically or financially successful. Why is it auctioning itself off?
prospect.org
December 13, 2025 at 6:16 PM
Reposted by Piers Beckley
There will be a day, when all these #MAGAts, #israelis and #russians will be begging for mercy.

And when that day comes, they’ll act like the #nazis did at Nüremburg trials: They’ll ask for our leniency, they’ll say: You’re supposed to be #woke so don’t you see I was just being used by the […]
Original post on mastodon.green
mastodon.green
December 13, 2025 at 6:55 AM
Insomnia, or my body telling me I ought to shift to a biphasic sleep pattern?
December 13, 2025 at 4:02 AM