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

[Andrew Gray]

2008/4/22 David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:

>  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.

That's the 1988 Act as amended by the Copyright (Visually Impaired
Persons) Act 2002, if you're like me and looked it up and got confused
:-)

[general non-GFDL-specific note, normal disclaimers apply]

A quick skim of the relevant bits in my lunchbreak suggests that it's
like the 'librarians get to make all sorts of copies' provisions; -
whilst it's very broad in what it applies to, it's very limited in
what/who you can do it for. Making the copy legitimately is all well
and good, but if you can't give it to anyone you get a bit stalled :-)

You'd probably be on shaky ground if you tried to use it to defend a
measure which produced a beneficial and potentially marketable
derivative product (ie, a spoken-word version) and then gave it out to
all-comers, regardless of impairment.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
 andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk