A rant on web font licenses • Hacker News Board

Re: A rant on web font licenses

#101

Post by j45 » Fri, Mar 10, 2023, 4:43 PM UTC

matteason wrote: post #17

MyFonts' licensing system effectively took down our entire website recently. We have a font licenced for some number of pageviews (250,000 or whatever), and they track that via an @import in the CSS they give you which points to a URL on a subdomain of myfonts.net. Except they changed their licensing mechanism, didn't tell their customers and broke the subdomain the @import was hitting. It didn't fail immediately, ju…

Interesting. I wonder if a cache like cloudflare could have reduced those impressions.

Re: A rant on web font licenses

#102

Post by derbOac » Fri, Mar 10, 2023, 4:44 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #97

oldstrangers wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Do you think you could vectorize all the pages in a book and magically get around the copyright?" ...what? The specific shapes and style of a font are not protected under copyright. It's only the software. "A US federal court held that typeface designs cannot be copyrighted in Eltra Corp. v. Ringer in 1978. Federal regulations made this explicit in 37 CFR 202.1(e) in 1992. The government's explanation here [1] makes…

OK so you vectorize some commercial font then release it for free. Haven't you essentially just recreated the software, which is copyrighted? Haven't you still violated copyright just with extra steps? It seems like a distinction without a difference.

Usually people don't just vectorize the font and rerelease it without any modifications. Usually there's some small stylistic changes made, which most people wouldn't notice, but type designers are attuned to. So then it's a substantive change.

I think this is the logic behind the legal decision: that the glyphs put constraints on things enough that it would be difficult to navigate legally in many cases.

Re: A rant on web font licenses

#103

Post by oldstrangers » Fri, Mar 10, 2023, 4:44 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #97

oldstrangers wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Do you think you could vectorize all the pages in a book and magically get around the copyright?" ...what? The specific shapes and style of a font are not protected under copyright. It's only the software. "A US federal court held that typeface designs cannot be copyrighted in Eltra Corp. v. Ringer in 1978. Federal regulations made this explicit in 37 CFR 202.1(e) in 1992. The government's explanation here [1] makes…

OK so you vectorize some commercial font then release it for free. Haven't you essentially just recreated the software, which is copyrighted? Haven't you still violated copyright just with extra steps? It seems like a distinction without a difference.

You can't create a usable font using vectors. Just not how it works. You could vectorize a brand name in a font of your choice without repercussion though.

And yes, people make 'clones' of fonts all the time that are ever so slightly different (Arial).

Re: A rant on web font licenses

#104

Post by thr717272 » Fri, Mar 10, 2023, 4:45 PM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #54

capableweb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle still does a lot of fuckery with their licenses. For example, you're prevented to share any benchmarks you've performed with their software. Not sure it's been proven in court that you could prevent anyone from sharing such information, but at least they're trying.

It's true. Now, completely without benchmarks, I can tell you that my workplace has migrated from Oracle to Postgresql and performance is essentially the same: a few things were a little faster on Oracle, a few a little faster on PG. All revenue is directly or indirectly dependent on the database systems, which have been continuous for 20+ years: this is not a side-project. PG administration is much, much faster. Sta…

Not only that but Postgres doesn't take two days to install properly. (Admittedly I'm talking a full from scratch Red Hat server with Oracle DB, Oracle managed data disks and Apex, bit still.)

Re: A rant on web font licenses

#105

Post by berry_sortoro » Fri, Mar 10, 2023, 4:45 PM UTC

matteason wrote: post #17

MyFonts' licensing system effectively took down our entire website recently. We have a font licenced for some number of pageviews (250,000 or whatever), and they track that via an @import in the CSS they give you which points to a URL on a subdomain of myfonts.net. Except they changed their licensing mechanism, didn't tell their customers and broke the subdomain the @import was hitting. It didn't fail immediately, ju…

[dead]

Re: A rant on web font licenses

#106

Post by spiralpolitik » Fri, Mar 10, 2023, 4:45 PM UTC

manuelmoreale wrote: post #60

rntz wrote: post #19

This situation is beginning to improve if you know where to look. There are several typeface designers who offer both low prices and reasonable licensing terms for their fonts; for instance, David Jonathan Ross ( https://djr.com/ ) has a "Font of the Month Club" that gives you one font per month at $6/month; even without membership you can get previous club fonts for $24; and the licensing terms are plain english. Ma…

I didn't know about DJR's Font of the Month Club. That's kinda neat. > That said, usage tiers (where you must pay more if your website gets a certain # of views/month) seem ubiquitous. I think these are ok Why do you think that's ok if you don't mind me asking? I worked on sites that used to generate lots of views but made 0 money because were not designed to be commercial projects. Why should I pay more money for a…

This is 100% what prevents me from using paid fonts with views/month.

In a lot of cases, you cannot predict ahead of time what your page views are going to be. All it takes is a page to go viral on social media and you've blown through your allocation in a day. Even worse you have no idea on what the overage will be as most font licenses say "call us" if you need more than the X/month the package delivers.

Re: A rant on web font licenses

#107

Post by j45 » Fri, Mar 10, 2023, 4:47 PM UTC

abruzzi wrote: post #15

conradfr wrote: post #4

> Typefaces are, to the best of my knowledge, the only digital product that try to fuck you over with bullshit licenses Has Oracle disappeared? The article is kind of true though, especially when you need a font for a small part of your website like headers, the licence often make it not worth it if you're not a company. There's no middle ground between "here's your free font" and "pay me/us a lot of money".

This is the same line that made me scratch my head. I'm a non-network guy who has been stuck migrating our phone system from PRI to SIP, and every time I think I get it done, I have to buy another license from Cisco--that our resellers didn't tell us about at the beginning of the project. The latest issues is our voice gateways need a special security license to handle TLS. Outside that, cost per usage is one of the…

If you aren’t tied into Cisco permanently, maybe this can shed a light on the path ahead.

There’s some excellent voip and sip solutions. Asterisk has been packaged into many a reliable flavour.

Re: A rant on web font licenses

#108

Post by ryukafalz » Fri, Mar 10, 2023, 4:47 PM UTC

nullstyle wrote: post #30

jtbayly wrote: post #3

> Typefaces are, to the best of my knowledge, the only digital product that try to fuck you over with bullshit licenses. Oh, if only that were true.

Can you think of any more egregious examples? Fonts are by far the worst in my experience.

I mean, how about "buying" digital products that can be shut down at the whim of the distributor?

Like e-books: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48829661

Or games: https://www.wired.com/story/google-stadia-shutting-down-phil...

Or movies: https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/8/23199861/playstation-store...

Sometimes you get refunds, sometimes you don't. Also at the whim of the distributor!

Re: A rant on web font licenses

#109

Post by Pet_Ant » Fri, Mar 10, 2023, 4:49 PM UTC

makeitdouble wrote: post #98

Pet_Ant wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you going to re kern and re layout the page when the font arrives? It makes me angry that this is even a sentence. Call me an old fart but I really felt that the web lost the thread when this became a concern. Websites shouldn't be magazines. Typography and layouts are nice to have, but the first priority should be information and content. But then the marketing people got involved and it had to become part of…

> Websites shouldn't be magazines. Why though? We’re in 2023 and magazines got out of print to move to the web. Telling literal magazines “no, you shouldn’t exist here” is pretty harsh. But I’ll grant you the mental image is powerful. I imagine you going to a restaurant and shouting “what’s with the decorum ? And that background music ? and all this space between tables ? this should be a warehouse with everyone sitt…

I'm happy to chose to have an experience, frankly I enjoy fine dining. But I refuse to go if I can't get access to the prices beforehand. There is a difference between an authentic experience (say the opera) and using it as a manipulative tactic. Do not get between me and the information. If I call an ask how much the lobster bisque is, don't tell me to hold while they get ahold of someone who can say it with a French accent. This is about empowering the consumer.

And even in a traditional magazine the design should never take precedence over the content. (...waiting for the Marshall McLuhan apologist to show up). I mean there is a reason that CSS is not necessary to render HTML or why Progressive Enhancement was a real movement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement

Re: A rant on web font licenses

#110

Post by Springtime » Fri, Mar 10, 2023, 4:49 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #97

oldstrangers wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Do you think you could vectorize all the pages in a book and magically get around the copyright?" ...what? The specific shapes and style of a font are not protected under copyright. It's only the software. "A US federal court held that typeface designs cannot be copyrighted in Eltra Corp. v. Ringer in 1978. Federal regulations made this explicit in 37 CFR 202.1(e) in 1992. The government's explanation here [1] makes…

OK so you vectorize some commercial font then release it for free. Haven't you essentially just recreated the software, which is copyrighted? Haven't you still violated copyright just with extra steps? It seems like a distinction without a difference.

Apart from the glyphs (the character shapes) there's also the unique kerning data, ligatures/sequences of characters that produce other outputs, hinting data (for monitor displays) and such.