This is an interesting discussion. I get the idea of SSiW being a course based on speaking and listening and ‘not to worry’ about the written from. Personally, I felt I needed to see the words spelt, to help me learn. The thing is as someone who grew up in Wales, I have experience of writing in Welsh in school and seeing Welsh written on a daily basis. So, for those of us in Wales, it seems actually counter-productive to go out of the way to try and ignore the written word. Thus, I would be tempted to use ‘spin-off’ material for cementing the language, because I can read anything written, as long as it only includes vocabulary covered in this course.
One of the great strengths of this course is that as a subscriber you can download the material to devices so you can do the challenges wherever you are, or even try a few sentences when you have a spare couple of minutes. It is a positive thing that we can us the material however we wish for our personal use, but then we can use the material in accessible ways, which indeed may bring more people to the site. it is fortunate that the language is still free, that I don’t have to pay a fine to anyone for using it.
Copyright is an utter minefield these days, because the distinction between copyrighted material and full accessibility is very blurred. It seems that all copyright holders can do is demand material is taken down, but this requires a lot of time and effort. Society seems to be moving away from traditional provider-purchaser relations, material is expected to be open source and other ways of monetising it occur, often through people liking the content sufficiently to pay for it (well this is how music works these days), even though they already have a hard copy.
I am happy for Aran to live in his fantasy castle, waited on by legions of servants, but I get the impression that Aran has produced this course because he wants us all to learn Welsh, rather than to pay for the cleaning of his moat. Really, anything to help further the language and to make it easier to learn should be welcomed, but there is a case for ensuring that the course maintains it’s integrity, because without the forum and the community, this course would be so much weaker and most of us are happy to pay for access to the fantastic content and this should continue, which will require some vigilance that material isn’t overly leaky.