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Edit: OK, the original post is extremely unclear. To clarify: the original font is named "FF Confidential" (which the post doesn't even mention). The seemingly illegal clone is called "XBAND Rough".
> This is so typical of people who are just doing a hatchet job for money but have no personal interest in the topic or skin in the game.
This is both true and incomplete. Advocates against piracy are time and again caught infringing on IP. I think about when Lily Allen stole the content of her anti-piracy screed "It's Not Alright" from Techdirt[0]:
> However, [...] the rest of the blog post – put there by Lilly herself – is someone else’s work. Arrr mateys, Long John Allen lifted the entire post from another site – Techdirt.com – effectively pirating the work of the one and only Mike Masnick.
> “I think it’s wonderful that Lilly Allen found so much value in our Techdirt post that she decided to copy — or should I say ‘pirate’? — the entire post,” Mike told TorrentFreak on hearing the shocking news.
The anti-piracy creators demand that we stay within their narrow definition of "piracy", which just so happens to exclude the work that they steal. Yes, the creative agency behind the "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" ad are disconnected from the cause. And their clients at the MPAA and FACT do not consider fonts to be worthy of the protections that are ostensibly the basis of their existence.
0: https://torrentfreak.com/file-sharing-heroine-lilly-allen-is...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A typeface design, in the U.S., no, but the digital font file comprising outline data and instructions, according to current U.S. law, for an overview of current case law and a proposal see: https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/chtlj/vol10/iss1/5/
There's no evidence XBAND Rough was extracted from a digital source bit-for-bit, unless someone can point to any? It seems like it was just a hobbyist project to recreate the look of the font from the anti-piracy ads? Which is 100% legal. Edit: OK, so the original font appears to be "FF Confidential"? Why didn't the post even mention that? So maybe it is a digital clone, which would be illegal. But then strange that…
What saddens me is that a lot of people are so ignorant that they don't even realize a font is something that takes creativity, tradecraft and a lot of work/time/effort to design.
>> What saddens me is that a lot of people are so ignorant that they don't even realize a font is something that takes creativity, tradecraft and a lot of work/time/effort to design. I get that an average computer user who just views content might not. But as soon as you start creating stuff and even searching for and downloading a font you like I'd think some kind of mental bell would ring like "oh, these are a thin…
If you're a professional using them in your work, that's an entirely different story, and you are significantly more likely to appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into making them.
The moral background for copyright is in free fall these days. It is quickly turning into one of these things that there are laws for, and everyone thinks it is rediculous, it is never enforced and DE facto not a law. And what a shame that is.
What saddens me is that a lot of people are so ignorant that they don't even realize a font is something that takes creativity, tradecraft and a lot of work/time/effort to design.
A well made font, from an artistic perspective, is a thing of beauty-- particularly when it incorporates subtle visual themes and nuances. It's definitely more than just "drawing the alphabet". There are also metric ass-tons of glyphs necessary to make a usable font.
Likewise, a properly hinted digital font file, especially with little touches like ligatures, is also a thing of utilitarian beauty. It's a ton of work to get that right.
That the shapes of fonts can't be protected by copyright isn't a new idea. Anybody who makes a font today should know that going in. I wouldn't make a font with the expectation of getting paid outside of doing it for a specific commission. Doing it "for the love" and expecting to get paid seems like a losing business proposition.
What saddens me is that a lot of people are so ignorant that they don't even realize a font is something that takes creativity, tradecraft and a lot of work/time/effort to design.
I know we don't really do humor on HN, but working in the car industry, this comedic Aussie rebuttal always amused me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb7N-JtQWGI
What saddens me is that a lot of people are so ignorant that they don't even realize a font is something that takes creativity, tradecraft and a lot of work/time/effort to design.
Except most of the creative part was done 100 years ago and companies are now trying to protect the fact that they digitized something that has existed for a century or longer.