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Question on getting FSI. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| Smither Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5681 days ago 13 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 1 of 7 05 October 2009 at 6:53pm | IP Logged |
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I'm currently learning German with my university, on top of my main Engineering course.
However, there are a few clashes, meaning I can't make all of my German lessons. So, I need to supplement them with some private study, and I thought FSI would be a good start. Now, I remember listening to the beginning of a course labeled "FSI German" that I downloaded a few months ago, here, for free. But I see here that you can buy an "FSI German" course. My question is: are they both the same course? If so, is the free one legal? If so, why is someone trying to sell it, when I can get it for free? Edited by Smither on 05 October 2009 at 6:55pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jondesousa Tetraglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/Zgg3nRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6264 days ago 227 posts - 297 votes  Speaks: English*, Portuguese, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Mandarin, Spanish | Message 2 of 7 05 October 2009 at 7:10pm | IP Logged |
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My question is: are they both the same course? Yes, they are the same. I believe that Francois has not updated the language pages to reflect the free copies downloadable from the other website. The material was created by the Foreign Service Institute of the US State Department as such, it is considered in the public domain. If so, is the free one legal? Both are legal (see above). If so, why is someone trying to sell it, when I can get it for free? Barrons has republished it and sells it to those who would like a hard-copy version. They don't, however, sell all the possible titles (for example Programmatic Portuguese II). The Barron's copies are also more clean in the typeface compared to the scanned documents on the website; however, I have used the website copies of both Portugese books and I had planned on possibly using the German book for my German studies. I have heard the Italian book is not so helpful. Hope this helps. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 3 of 7 05 October 2009 at 7:12pm | IP Logged |
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The key is that those old FSI language courses were produced by the US government by people who were not private contractors. Unless otherwise specified, products of the US government are in the public-domain in the USA. With that logic, anyone in the USA can take certain original FSI courses and either redistribute them for free or for a fee.
This explains why you can have altruistic people giving these courses away (sometimes after having already paid good money for them in the first place) as well as more money-grubbing types who charge a premium when reselling some FSI material that was originally in the public domain in the USA. A variation of this second idea is that because some FSI courses are in the public-domain in the USA, an American party can take the original material, make some modifications to it, and then apply a copyright to the edited material. By the way, despite what you may see and hear, FSI courses are not automatically in the public-domain worldwide. The idea of government-made products automatically being in public-domain varies. In some countries (e.g. Canada, UK), there is crown copyright (i.e. the government can hold copyright on its materials). As mentioned above, material from the US government is usually in public-domain in the USA, but there are exceptions (they often arising when the government-sourced material was actually created by people who had been hired by the federal government as private contractors. These private contractors may hold copyright on their creations with the federal government having licenses/permission to use these creations for their purposes) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Smither Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5681 days ago 13 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 4 of 7 06 October 2009 at 3:41pm | IP Logged |
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So . . . I can download all the FSI German material from here without any problems.
Thanks guys. (Makes me wonder why I didn't do this before...) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jondesousa Tetraglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/Zgg3nRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6264 days ago 227 posts - 297 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Mandarin, Spanish | Message 5 of 7 06 October 2009 at 4:58pm | IP Logged |
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Good Luck Smither. I hope all goes well.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7144 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 6 of 7 06 October 2009 at 6:23pm | IP Logged |
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Smither, there's a newer site for FSI materials that's more up-to-date in terms of recently added materials, and has more materials for both German and other languages:
http://www.fsi-language-courses.org/Content.php It was established as a backup site to the original one, but since the original site hasn't been updated in over a year, the backup one is probably the first place to look now for FSI materials. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Smither Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5681 days ago 13 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 7 of 7 13 October 2009 at 12:51pm | IP Logged |
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Oh cool, thanks.
And tape one is already more helpful than my classes. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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