[Foundation-l] Legal position of audio recordings of GFDL content?

[David Gerard]

One important question: how do you manage GFDL on spoken text? To the
satisfaction of, e.g., querulous Commons admins who deal with
licensing stupidities all the time? (Geni, I'm looking at you ;-) )

Requiring a reading of the license on the end of all audios is
onerous. Our many spoken articles on English Wikipedia are
(presumably) not a violation as long as they're on Wikipedia, with the
license text a link away - but aren't really unencumbered for use
elsewhere.

Is the GFDL fundamentally discriminatory against the blind?

Kat Walsh has asked licensing at fsf.org, but they tend to act like a
Magic 8 Ball that says "read the license text and consult your
lawyer."

I asked about audio versions of GFDL text on the FSFE discussion list.
One useful suggestion (from M. J. Ray) was:

> Not in England if done to allow access by visually impaired people in
> certain circumstances (Copyright ... Act 1988 sections 31A-31F).
> There's probably other special cases too.

Is there such a provision in US law? I presume there is one in other
legal systems too.

This in itself IMO is a strong case for porting to CC-by-sa.


- d.