Amazon has modified its new Kindle 2, the subject of a somewhat over-heated copyright dispute that I commented on earlier, so that its new "text-to-speech" functionality will be enabled/disabled at the option of the publisher -- i.e., that each publisher will get to decide for itself, when licensing books for Kindle sale, whether to allow it to be "spoken" through the S-2-T processor or not. Not good news for the consumer, it seems to me -- although if Amazon makes it clear, when you're purchasing Kindle books, whether the S-2-T functionality works or not on that particular title, it's probably a wash for most of us [though not for the blind or the partially blind -- they lose, in this deal]

[thanks to Tom Hynes for the pointer]