A while ago I copied the old course one onto an mp3 player for a visually impaired lady living locally.
I am pleased to hear that she has completed the course and would like copies of course two and three in order to continue her studies.
My question is, is it OK to copy and share these lessons with somebody who has not subscribed to the forum?
If this is acceptable then it seems an easy way to help someone progress with the language in spite of their own personal difficulties and may be another way that we can spread the word with other people with similar disadvantages.
Hi,
I’m not an SSi person to give an official response to this (you’ll need Aran or Iestyn for that), but I believe the answer here is ‘it depends’.
If you’re just copying the free courses (Old Course 1, New Level 1), this seems fine. They’re freely available and you’re not costing SSi anything by doing this.
If you’re copying paid-for files for someone who themselves has paid for them, this seems fine. Again, you’re not denying income to SSi or anything.
If you’re copying paid-for files and giving them to someone who hasn’t paid for them, that’s piracy and it’s a bad thing for SSi’s continual survival as a business.
Given that you’re asking about Course 2 and 3, I think the answer here in the general case is ‘no, you can’t freely distribute those files’, but if the person sets up a subscription themselves I don’t see why it would be a problem for you to help them get the files onto their media players.
I think that’s a fair and comprehensive answer from Kev - and it’s certainly true that giving away the courses that create the income that allows us to carry on producing more materials would be a fairly damaging pattern for us.
Having said that, if this lady is not in a position to make a contribution, and would otherwise stop learning, maybe we could leave it to your discretion.
i don’t know the lady personally but I will advise that a subscription is required wherever possible when using the advanced courses in order to support SSIW for all.
Perhaps support could be given in other ways if payment is difficult by the lady giving an account of her experiences and sucess to local media in order to promote the site wider in the local community?
A slightly different, but related issue: what if more than one member of the family under one roof want to study the same SSi course?
Now, let’s say for argument’s sake, I lent my wife my MP3 player (no file copying involved) just to give the courses a try. Well, this is just like lending someone a book … no copying or piracy involved.
However, she might then go on to download it to the home computer she uses, and use the course from there. That’s slightly different, although technically, it’s a jointly owned computer under the same roof, so maybe a grayish area.
What I’m actually leading up to is perhaps could there be a joint or family membership for people living under the same roof, paying a slightly discounted subscription. SSi would not lose out, and would gain somewhat, and people would feel they were making a contribution, but not having to pay quite as much as they would have to for normal individual membership.
Joint/family membership of organisations is not uncommon, and I wonder if it could be applied to SSi as well?
(Or maybe it’s there already and I haven’t noticed it)
(This is all academic as far as my family is concerned, as so far, I haven’t managed to persuade Mrs E to re-kindle her somewhat distant primary school Welsh, although we can always hope. Mind you, there is always Spanish…).
I’ve always felt that’s fair enough - where there’s shared physical ownership of the computers that have access - we’ve had utterly lovely people sometimes get in touch to let us know that they’ve taken out membership for two people in a family, and we think they’re fabulous - and it probably would be a great idea for us to add a family option as a half-way house on that…
