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You wouldn't steal a font

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Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#311

Post by gpvos »

wubrr wrote: post #260
tptacek wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should care if you're being combatative, but, even more importantly, quoting previous comments the way you're doing doesn't work well on HN and is also a flamewar trope. Everybody can read the comments you're responding to. Just refer back to them in prose. A single quote, maybe 2 in a long comment, fine, but what you're doing now creates the impression that you're sort of rebutting what the previous commenter sa…

I am rebutting what the previous commenter said, sentence by sentence (almost), I don't know why that tells you that I'm not actually thinking about what they said though. Did I misunderstand or misrepresent something they said?

Going against someone is not the same as rebutting, the quality of the argument counts.

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#312

Post by badmintonbaseba »

alabastervlog wrote: post #82
wildzzz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even harder to get away with pirating fonts now with web fonts. Either the service can detect you pulling a font for a domain that isn't paying for it or webcrawlers will find unpaid fonts.

"Pulling a font for a domain"—wtf, isn't the client making the request? Why detect anything, just require a referrer on your allow-list, and deny if it's not there.

An allow-list would probably suck for local development for users that do have a valid license.

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#313

Post by wvh »

tptacek wrote: post #92
phony-account wrote: post #24

Is this the wrong time to rant about font licensing though? I’ve always bought and paid for fonts, but as I’ve gradually transitioned to mobile app development, I one day realized that all the fonts I bought for print are now worthless to me. These crazy outdated licenses that let you print as many magazines or books you want forever, for a one-time price. But if your hobby is making apps, then suddenly the same font…

There is maybe nothing in the entire world that I am less sympathetic towards than the cause of font piracy / font liberation. You have perfectly good --- in fact, historically excellent --- fonts loaded by default for free on any computer you buy today. Arguing for the oppression of font licenses is, to me, like arguing about how much it costs to buy something at Hermès. Just don't shop at Hermès.

I don't know what a Hermès is or connotates, but I think the complaint is as much about the artificial and seemingly arbitrary restrictions as opposed to purely the price.

You can try to create a Veblen good out of a digital artifact and play the all or nothing game, but it's proven very hard to restrict something which can be copied at no cost and with no limitations.

When you buy expensive clothes, it would be silly for the seller to try and license them to be only worn on Mondays, or at dress-code events, or based on your taxable income. People are not going to take your "license" seriously, even if you'd have some legal grounds and might well win a legal argument.

I have a great deal of admiration for artists and designers, and I know that creating a multiple-variant typeface with great applicability that's either historically correct or truly innovative is an art form.

This reminds me of Napster-era debates about artists' rights versus distribution.

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#314

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #256
Dylan16807 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they'd deserve to be mocked in public. Complaining about something is usually not an attempt to make a moral crusade.

Why? Everybody can just not buy the wallet if they care about this term of use. Who's being harmed? This isn't nitpicking. At some point you're really effectively just arguing that there should be a ceiling on what you can charge for a typeface. That's not an argument that respects the art and craft of type design; it's one that privileges convenience.

[deleted]

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#315

Post by biercarsten »

ghaff wrote: post #286
behringer wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why are the fonts so expensive?

Because designers fuss a lot about nearly undetectable differences in color, fonts, and many other things. Maybe they make a difference in the aggregate. But if you can’t identify the difference between Ariak and Helvetica (to pick a particularly glaring example) you’re probably not one of those designers.

I agree. Many people can hardly tell the difference between Arial and Helvetica. There used to be a website where you could test how good you are at telling them apart.

You won't notice many small differences between certain fonts. But that doesn't mean they're unnecessary. As you said, they make a difference when taken together. For screens, there are a number of adjustments and techniques that improve screen readability. Hinting, separate designs, contrast for low dpi and subpixel rendering compatibility, for example. At least some of the optimizations don't work out of the box, but have to be adjusted by designers. That's why it can happen that a font you bought for print media now requires an extra license for websites and apps.

There are plenty of wonderfully readable fonts for the web and apps that are free and sufficient for most projects. If you want something special, I don't think it's wrong to pay for it. Personally, I would prefer more reasonable prices, though.

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#316

Post by z3t4 »

tptacek wrote: post #92
phony-account wrote: post #24

Is this the wrong time to rant about font licensing though? I’ve always bought and paid for fonts, but as I’ve gradually transitioned to mobile app development, I one day realized that all the fonts I bought for print are now worthless to me. These crazy outdated licenses that let you print as many magazines or books you want forever, for a one-time price. But if your hobby is making apps, then suddenly the same font…

There is maybe nothing in the entire world that I am less sympathetic towards than the cause of font piracy / font liberation. You have perfectly good --- in fact, historically excellent --- fonts loaded by default for free on any computer you buy today. Arguing for the oppression of font licenses is, to me, like arguing about how much it costs to buy something at Hermès. Just don't shop at Hermès.

There are very few fonts that exist in all the major platforms. But there are excellent free and open source fonts that you can use. I also want to point out that if you make an "app" and publish it on a platform like appstore, you are basically a slave to the platform.

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#317

Post by floriankarsten »

phony-account wrote: post #24

Is this the wrong time to rant about font licensing though? I’ve always bought and paid for fonts, but as I’ve gradually transitioned to mobile app development, I one day realized that all the fonts I bought for print are now worthless to me. These crazy outdated licenses that let you print as many magazines or books you want forever, for a one-time price. But if your hobby is making apps, then suddenly the same font…

[dead]

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#318

Post by speerer »

jchw wrote: post #22

I don't know if this actually counts as copyright infringement, since typeface shapes are not eligible for copyright in the U.S. (disclaimer: IANAL) so depending on how it was cloned, it might be legal. The more amusing detail, to me, is whether or not XBAND Rough is related to the XBAND peripheral for video game consoles in the 90s. (Fascinating story, it was an add-on that enabled multiplayer over a phoneline on th…

Thanks for emphasising the US perspective, because it matters.

IAAL outside the US, and I'm aware in UK and EU law copyright can subsist in typefaces, and there are specific provisions relating to them. Since FACT is a UK Org, taking UK law as an example, see ref. []

I personally find it a good example of aging law. It's quite difficult to reconcile the law as drafted (in 1987) with modern digital font uses. Is a PDF with embedded fonts "material produced by typesetting", or is it an "article specifically designed or adapted for producing material in a particular typeface"? Arguably it could be either.

I'm not aware of this ever having been considered by a court.

[] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/part/I/chapter/...

Re: You wouldn't steal a font

#319

Post by close04 »

tptacek wrote: post #158
gkoberger wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm saying a Michelin chef can complain about a 50x increase in the cost of truffles without negating the fact that a lot of people happily survive on ramen.

No, those things aren't comparable. Truffles have a functional role in a dish. A typeface does not have a meaningful functional role in a document, compared to the high-quality freely-available alternatives. This is like complaining about some kind of specially-carved or dyed truffle.

> Truffles have a functional role in a dish

Cheap "truffle oil" can fill that role as much as a free font can fill the role of a premium one. The real truffle and the premium font have a functional role for the few people who can tell either apart. For the rest maybe anything works, just put something on the plate or screen.

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