Live data from Hacker News

Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)

pixelambacht.nl

131–140 of 145 posts

Re: Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)

#131
post #31

Don't PDFs and Word documents embed fonts, too?

Yes, and if you embed a font that you licensed as a webfont, you've violated the license. https://processtypefoundry.com/help/base/webfont-license-agr...

My point is, if you have a desktop license (which is fine to use in print) you'll be "redistributing" it in much the same way as a website which uses @font-face and serves you the font files.

Re: Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)

#132
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Font licenses make the difference very, very clear. > The following are allowed by this agreement; you may: > 1b. Use the WOFF, WOFF2, and EOT web font formats provided by Process to style text on your websites via the CSS @font-face rule for an unlimited number of websites whose content is controlled by you. You agree to use reasonable measures to ensure the fonts are available only for the process of styling text o…

They make the difference clear, but they don’t make a lot of sense.

Makes perfect sense to be, tbh. Licenses are just contracts and they can exactly describe what you're allowed and not allowed to do, including allowing use cases based on intent and presentation.

Re: Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)

#133
post #5

What'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.

The people who draft these licenses are pretty smart and explain VERY CLEARLY what is and is not allowed. For instance! > The following are allowed by this agreement; you may: > 1b. Use the WOFF, WOFF2, and EOT web font formats provided by Process to style text on your websites via the CSS @font-face rule for an unlimited number of websites whose content is controlled by you. You agree to use reasonable measures to e…

>At a minimum, and by way of illustration not limitation, reasonable measures include i) preventing unlicensed third-party access, i.e. hotlinking and, ii) not allowing direct download of the fonts unrelated to the process of styling text for your website.

It's not clear. How on earth are you supposed to implement ii)?

I'm not interested in answers which mention the Referer header. There are a myriad of factors which can prevent it being sent with the original request required the style elements on the site.

Re: Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)

#134
post #129
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are enough fonts. It wouldn't be a great loss for humanity if we didn't get as many new fonts because of decreased profit margins in the font design industry.

There is also enough of almost anything by your logic or lack thereof. Guess everyone should just pack up and go home.

Not a terrible idea. Society can call this problem domain solved, and outside of the purview of copyright.

Re: Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

18/20 share a single tell you can't miss if you know about it. MATTEL doesn't -- and, I thought, neither does TOYOTA. How'd you figure TOYOTA? I got MATTEL and TOYOTA both right based on the heuristic "Helvetica apparently has fatter lines", which I learned from the quiz itself.

I got MATTEL right by looking at the sizes of the spacings between the letters. Not sure if it is real or just an artifact, but I picked the one where the spacings where the most regular and that turned out to be the Helvetica one.

For TOYOTA, I have the impression that in one option all letters have the same weight, while in the other one the A is a bit bolder than the other letters. I figured the one with all the same weight should be Helvetica, but I was wrong.

Looking at the fatness of the lines feels quite fragile: aren't there versions of Helvetica in all kinds of weights?

Re: Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)

#136
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can and do find out. I used to work for a company that got hit up by Monotype for a six figure fine to pay for using one of their fonts. The previous head of design hadn’t bothered to sort tricky things like paying for fonts, mainly, I think, because he knew senior management wouldn’t spring for it. We switched them out for free alternatives and negotiated down the fee, but they still had to part with a good amo…

Companies which depend on IP trolling for their primary revenue always end up being extortionists who drain society without producing further value.

As one of the world’s largest type foundaries I wouldn’t say that Monotype doesn’t provide value.

They had us bang to rights for using one of their fonts on a site with over 1bn annual pageviews without a licence.

Re: Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)

#137
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better, what if I have it on github because github pages is my site host?

I don't host w/ github pages, but when I was looking I don't remember there being any restriction on the repo being private. Why does the repo need to be public?

it costs money to be private

Re: Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)

#138
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and if you embed a font that you licensed as a webfont, you've violated the license. https://processtypefoundry.com/help/base/webfont-license-agr...

My point is, if you have a desktop license (which is fine to use in print) you'll be "redistributing" it in much the same way as a website which uses @font-face and serves you the font files.

Well the difference is that the license will actually say that you can embed the font in documents you produce. As far as the license is concerned, emailing a document with the font embedded is a different thing from zipping the bare font and sharing it on BitTorrent is a different thing from embedding it on a webpage. You can burn a CD with your documents on it and share it, you can't burn a CD with a bunch of bare font files and share that. Even if the same exact bits end up written to the CD in both cases.

The technicalities, as far as the license is concerned, are not really the point. It's not about whether you're physically sending the bits of the font over the wire, but the whole context in which you're doing it.

Re: Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the license explicitly forbids you putting it on GitHub? https://processtypefoundry.com/help/base/webfont-license-agr...

if the license explicitly forbids it you better not do it as I noted above. but if the license does not explicitly forbid then I think you have an argument that putting your website code on github is pretty common practice.

By default you don't have any distribution rights at all. None. You just have a bare font file that you can't share with anyone else.

That's not very useful, so the license says "you may distribute this font file as part of a website; you must be using this font to style a webpage. Any other kind of distribution at all is still prohibited." There's no "common practice" exception- just because they open up a little window that allows you to distribute the font in a particular manner doesn't mean they've accidentally given you the right to distribute it according to "common practice."

Sharing MP3s on P2P sites is also a common practice, but obviously you don't have a license to do that when you buy a CD.

Re: Github became the web's largest font piracy site (2017)

#140
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who draft these licenses are pretty smart and explain VERY CLEARLY what is and is not allowed. For instance! > The following are allowed by this agreement; you may: > 1b. Use the WOFF, WOFF2, and EOT web font formats provided by Process to style text on your websites via the CSS @font-face rule for an unlimited number of websites whose content is controlled by you. You agree to use reasonable measures to e…

>At a minimum, and by way of illustration not limitation, reasonable measures include i) preventing unlicensed third-party access, i.e. hotlinking and, ii) not allowing direct download of the fonts unrelated to the process of styling text for your website. It's not clear. How on earth are you supposed to implement ii)? I'm not interested in answers which mention the Referer header. There are a myriad of factors which…

Yes, that one's a bit tricky, isn't it? You might inspect the user-agent to at least try and only serve the font to browsers. You might also make sure that if there is a Referer, isn't not someone else's referer. I don't think it has to be foolproof to satisfy the terms of the license.

It might also just be: you have to check the referer. If your website has technical issues such that sometimes the referer isn't available, you have to change it so it always is. Or host it on one of the approved third-party hosts referenced in the license.

Post reply on HN