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Digitizing FSI | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| virgule Senior Member Antarctica Joined 6840 days ago 242 posts - 261 votes  Studies: Korean | Message 225 of 237 14 March 2006 at 11:56am | IP Logged | ||
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Sorry, I didn't take the time to read through the whole thread... but I am bit concerned about this digitizing and sharing of "FSI" material. I do understand from the posts here that the courses were created by the US government, and thus are public domain.
However, works that are themselves based on public domain works are protected by intellectual property laws. This includes the typographical arrangement of book, and the sound recordings. What I am worried about is not the digitizing of public domain material, but that you digitize and distribute works that are actually under protection. The very first post in this thread, for example mentions that the Barron's version was "retypeset"—meaning it is protected, unless they decided to release the material as public domain, something I doubt. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JWC Groupie United States Joined 7098 days ago 69 posts - 107 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 226 of 237 14 March 2006 at 1:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Valid concerns but a couple of mitigating factors developed during the extended discussion on digitizing.
First, the administrator for this site repeatedly stated that only information related to public domain material could be discussed on this site, not bootlegged copies of privately enhanced material. This site does not itself offer any public domain FSI material. Second, the website that gdfellows has set up for FSI material uses only material purchased from the government, not material enhanced by private parties. Barron's uses the old type font that one finds in the original government publications for many of its courses, but has begun to reformat the pages while its audio contains new segments regarding cultural aspects of a particular country interspersed with the old government language segments. That reformating and the new audio segments presumably are protected, and Barron's material is not (to my knowledge) part of any current discussions regarding publically posting FSI material--the material posted on gdfellows site, again as noted above, has apparently come only from government purchases and not private distributors. But you do well to make the distinction, and out of respect to the gracious efforts of the administrator Francois to create this website, we all should clarify in our posts that original, unenhanced government materials are the only things on the table when the subject of publically posting material arises. --jwc 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| virgule Senior Member Antarctica Joined 6840 days ago 242 posts - 261 votes Studies: Korean | Message 227 of 237 15 March 2006 at 3:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the reply. That's reassuring. Yes, I was indeed thinking about François... responsible for the website to a certain extent.
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| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7376 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes 12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 228 of 237 15 March 2006 at 3:46am | IP Logged | ||
Francois is not sleeping at the wheel thank you, but there are no FSI files hosted on this website and I have never tolerated links to bootleg material (although I imagine that some people would like that). If people ditize public domain government language courses and distribute them using file sharing websites, I can't see a problem. This issue has been discussed many times before and there are scores of companies who publish their own versions of the famed FSI courses. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7104 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 229 of 237 22 March 2006 at 1:21am | IP Logged | ||
EDIT: The entire course is found in the link below. Check out the ever updated website here, run by board member gdfellows. Edited by Sir Nigel on 25 August 2006 at 10:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| r538 Newbie United States Joined 6668 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English* | Message 230 of 237 25 August 2006 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Six months since the last post on this topic, so maybe there's a new thread dedicated to this.
I have the Saudi Arabic FSI course that I'd like to put up with the others. 1) I want to make sure I'm not duplicating anyone else's efforts. 2) If there's a quick summary with instructions, especially on preferred (i.e., free) software for the audio manipulation, I'd appreciate it. 3) I might try to put the text up as text, rather than as a PDF picture. The layout of the book might be lost, but it will be easier to manipulate for flashcards and searching. 4) I might try encoding in a different format, unless the group is wedded to the idea of MP3s. I noticed some of the other programs were encoded at 64 kbps, and it seems likely that Ogg Vorbis would work at 32 kpbs and maybe, Speex could get down to 16 kbps (the advantage of the latter two formats is they're non-proprietary, so one who writes software to manipulate them won't have to license anything for MP3s). I'll have to check to confirm that common players (iPod, PDAs, etc...) would support either of these. Replies, especially on question (1) and (2) are appreciated. - R 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7104 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 231 of 237 25 August 2006 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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In reply to #1, if you check out the site here and contact gdfellows about uploading the course to him he'll be able to answer your questions.
# 2, Audacity is a good program to look at and it offers many features and is free. There's also a related program that allows for some sound restoration (e.g. the noise from the tapes). For # 3, OCR software is not the most accurate so a visual PDF is necessary. In regards to format, it seems mp3 is the best choice. 64kbps is fine, but if it's not encoded as mono it will sound like rubbish. If you can only produce stereo mp3s then make them 128kbps. Thanks for offering to digitise the course! Edited by Sir Nigel on 25 August 2006 at 11:02pm 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 232 of 237 25 August 2006 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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Send a PM to gdfellows before posting your stuff and to make sure that you're not duplicating efforts.
If I remember correctly, someone (Malcolm?) would be scanning FSI Hijazi Arabic, but didn't have the tapes. Some people have been using the free software, Audacity for converting the tapes to .mp3. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ I think that we're sticking with mp3 since it's least likely to be incompatible with most people's computers or portable players. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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