Don't PDFs and Word documents embed fonts, too?
Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)
31–40 of 145 posts
Re: Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
IANAL but I believe you may have a license (paid money) to use the font on your site but you may not have a licence redistribute the font. You paid for the right to air the latest UFC fight at your bar but that doesn't grant you the ability to sale DVDs of it. However a user of yours could just download the font from your web server or record the fight on their phone.
The analogy you are looking for is: You can give away DVD's of the fight inside your bar, but not outside.
Well, sure. The bartender can sell alcohol inside the bar but not outside the bar. Licensing can make these distinctions.
Re: Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)
#33Wait until they find out that when people visit the finished website in their browser, it will download the font! Oh the piracy! Just like in the real world, someone handing you the keys to their car doesn't mean you own it.
The legal issue is with the repo owner putting it in the repo. The problem is that it's a violation of the copyright license , that's the only reason it's an issue. Downloading the font file from the website is included in the license, so it's fine.
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Re: Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)
#34What's the difference between putting webfonts on your public website vs putting them on your public github? This seems like a distinction that only lawyers would care about, but I'm not a web developer (and I don't know much about webfonts) so maybe there's something I'm missing.
Github is searchable and has a big green “Download” button. I know, technically, getting a font from a website is more or less just as “easy”… for people without the ability to click “Inspect Element” and follow a link in the CSS, Github is far easier.
Re: Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)
#35Been doing searches for "site:github.com .ttf" for years. This is a feature not a bug.
Not if you're a font designer or type foundry.
Re: Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great article arguing why many large companies do this - https://www.arun.is/blog/custom-typefaces/
Edit- Also a fun old quiz that helps beg the question, do you really need to add a fancy font over a system font? - http://www.ironicsans.com/helvarialquiz/
I fully support your point—many times there are free or system fonts that are at least as of high quality.
That said I only missed MATTEL on that one. Helv has a few giveaways and refinements but most people don't care—though the differences Arial and other modified Helveticas do have arguably render the type less neutral.
Re: Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
IANAL but I believe you may have a license (paid money) to use the font on your site but you may not have a licence redistribute the font. You paid for the right to air the latest UFC fight at your bar but that doesn't grant you the ability to sale DVDs of it. However a user of yours could just download the font from your web server or record the fight on their phone.
But it's not like a webpage renders an image for you and then you rend an image: you send the user a font so that they can render the page themselves with that font. It's being distributed either way.
Licenses can totally distinguish between the two scenarios. Providing a clickable link to "Download Font Here!" is probably not allowed, but linking to the font for the purpose of displaying the actual webpage is fine. Even if they're the same url.
This is just bit coloring again: https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
Re: Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)
#38I'm guilty of having searched GitHub's repositories for fonts I like. Using them for personal projects and wouldn't mind paying for a license if I end up loving it. Though, it begs the question: who and how will find out that you simply borrowed the font?
Maybe in the future, a type foundry creates a font-specific webcrawler that compares GitHub usernames or public email addresses to a list of known buyers of the font in question, and then sends them a C&D if they're violating the license.
Re: Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)
#39I've been doing this for years -- Its a PIA dealing with each font foundry's DRM system and getting it to work on my local dev environment. When I go live, I deal with it but its also such a hassle to get clients to pay for a font, give me the required info to use the foundry's DRM, etc. I bet if a foundry used an honor system (give fonts away for free, charge a per-site license for commercial use) they'd still make a profit and not have to deal with complex DRM systems (and make it more likely for designers and developers to use their fonts).
Re: Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)
#40If I use a commercial font as part of my website design, I am in fact publishing that font on my site and anyone can obtain a copy of it -- in fact, they automatically do merely by visiting my site! Does this mean all my visitors are "pirating"? Of course not. Github may make the font more accessible/searchable, but that doesn't change anything about the copyright status of the font.
Me publishing something on Github does not grant everyone free rights to it -- in fact, copyright law says no one has rights to it unless I specifically grant those rights. This is most commonly done with a LICENSE file. The copyright rules apply to everything in the repository, including my code, and any fonts, icons or stock images. The fact something is on Github (or the internet, in general) doesn't make it public domain, you still have to abide by the license terms.
While I think the suggestion that "on github" = "piracy" is stupid, I could see a couple things that could apply:
(1) If the license for the font explicitly states it's for "use" or "distribution" on a single domain. Unless the license is clear about it, it'd really be up to lawyers to argue over whether hosting the code in a public repository on Github can be considered "use" or "distribution" -- and ultimately that argument is about one non-authenticating public URL being okay while another non-authenticating public URL is not.
(2) If I've put a commercial font in my repository along with a typical LICENSE file containing MIT/GPL/BSD/whatever without explicitly stating the fonts are not under that license, then I'm basically mis-representing the license for that font (which I should not be allowed to do).
Given that putting a font on Github is technically no different from publishing on my site in terms of someone being able to 'pirate' it, personally I think a Github repository with a proper license (not doing (2)) is fine, because the LICENSE file effectively says it's not okay to just copy that font.