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Font Smuggler – Copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs

brianmoore.com

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Re: Font Smuggler – Copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs

#71

Post by jmathai »

detritus wrote: post #22
jmathai wrote: post #18

Received DMCA takedown notices for a paid font I used for my wife’s interior design website that she liked but we didn’t pay for because…I’m lazy. I was surprised to receive the DMCA (it is hosted on GitHub Pages). I ignored the emails because…I’m lazy. They (GitHub) eventually took down the repository (and site). So I swapped to another font and I don’t think my wife noticed. I think all of this was still easier tha…

Out of interest, did you rename the font prior to use? I'm curious how they found it. You can also just stick them in a font-editor and re-export "as your own font" with some minor tweaks. Not that you should, of course.

I did not - I wasn't trying to evade - I was just being lazy.

I do believe whoever the font owners are paying just scrape the HTML and CSS looking for patterns matching their font.

Re: Font Smuggler – Copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs

#72

Post by ozaark »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #31
selectodude wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not matter to you, but in this circumstance, your opinion doesn’t matter.

It only matters to the designers. The users don't care which sans-serif font the designers picked, they all look the same.

You'd be hesitant to trust a brand if it can't keep consistent styling. Branding helps users identify a brand and believe it or not the aesthetics of a brand make a great deal of impact on consumers.

As others have said, your point comes across as "let's remove design who cares" because design and human computer interaction roles stopped where your understanding ends. Everything looks the same to you after all (it doesn't, you just haven't noticed it affecting your decision making).

Re: Font Smuggler – Copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs

#74

Post by anonymous_user9 »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #70
dhosek wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legally, typeface designs do not receive protection (which is based on idiotic declarations like “you can’t copyright the alphabet”) but digital font files are considered programs and thus are able to be protected as IP.¹ You can try to justify the theft to yourself but somewhere there’s an individual (or on some occasions many individuals) who spent a long time making decisions about how that typeface should look an…

>there are plenty of perfectly legible typefaces that are completely free for you to use. Legally based off the carefully considered positions of philosophers of law like Thomas Jefferson, and others just as renowned, who actually created modern copyright law in the United States, because they weren't trying to set you up to be rent-seeking degenerate scribblers for the next umpteen millennia. >but digital font files…

Type 1 fonts are PostScript programs, while OTF and TTF fonts use a turing-complete virtual machine to control hinting, ligatures, etc.

Re: Font Smuggler – Copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs

#75

Post by ryandrake »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #67
Someone wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to drink your own wine in a restaurant, you have to pay for that, too. This isn’t much different; there still are plenty of non-Google options for creating presentations to choose from that do allow using your own font.

If SaaS is a restaurant, what's software I purchase? A personal robot chef with an infinite ingredient supply, no charge for using my own wine? I think that supports the "Where did things go this wrong?" sentiment.

The analogies with physical businesses never make sense. Running an application on your own computer is nothing like eating at a restaurant. Just because the software is obtained from a server somewhere doesn't mean it's like going to a physical place to eat. Browsing to www.company.com is not akin to walking into a company's physical store. You're not "there." There is no "there."

Re: Font Smuggler – Copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs

#76

Post by ryandrake »

detritus wrote: post #41
iamcalledrob wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really should pay, especially for work by small foundries. Making a typeface takes a tremendous amount of work. The financial upside is extremely hard to justify. I think non-designers underestimate the amount of effort required by an order of magnitude. I put it in the territory of building indie games. Potentially years of your life go into it, and it's a huge problem if everyone pirates your work.

I'm actually a designer, have paid for many fonts - including licenses for websites - have made a couple myself and have a good idea how hard they are to make. That said, a certain corporation's bought up a load of fonts made over the past x decades and is making a tidy sum selling old rope again and again without adding anything of value, or funding the original designers/converters, so I'm quite happy to illuminate…

Fonts are (simplifying greatly) just code, right? I wonder when AI models will be able to cleanroom-clone the general look of a font without violating the copyright on the official version's underlying code.

Re: Font Smuggler – Copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs

#78

Post by argee »

iamcalledrob wrote: post #35
detritus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest, did you rename the font prior to use? I'm curious how they found it. You can also just stick them in a font-editor and re-export "as your own font" with some minor tweaks. Not that you should, of course.

You really should pay, especially for work by small foundries. Making a typeface takes a tremendous amount of work. The financial upside is extremely hard to justify. I think non-designers underestimate the amount of effort required by an order of magnitude. I put it in the territory of building indie games. Potentially years of your life go into it, and it's a huge problem if everyone pirates your work.

+1 — "just being lazy" is no excuse when you can just ask your LLM of choice for a free font recommendation similar to what you can't afford. If you absolutely can't live without using the paid font, of course you should pay for it!

Re: Font Smuggler – Copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs

#79

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

ozaark wrote: post #72
SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only matters to the designers. The users don't care which sans-serif font the designers picked, they all look the same.

You'd be hesitant to trust a brand if it can't keep consistent styling. Branding helps users identify a brand and believe it or not the aesthetics of a brand make a great deal of impact on consumers. As others have said, your point comes across as "let's remove design who cares" because design and human computer interaction roles stopped where your understanding ends. Everything looks the same to you after all (it do…

Consistency is not the same as making a technically-unique-but-visually-indistinguishable Helvetica clone.

Re: Font Smuggler – Copy hidden brand fonts into Google Docs

#80

Post by shiroiuma »

vrganj wrote: post #9
dijit wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh thanks! I looked but I missed that. So, I need to be super rich? Thats sad.

Why did we go from owning the software we run and being able to just modify things as we see fit to "You have to give Google a lot of money so you can have your own font in your own presentation"? Where did things go this wrong?

Most people decided that convenience was better than freedom and self-determination.

If people want the freedom to use their own fonts in their own presentation, and don't want to pay handsomely for the privilege, LibreOffice is freely downloadable. But they don't want to use that for some reason.

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