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

178 points by plibither8 7y ago

jancsika 7y ago
Is this "piracy" in the sense of Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean?" Like, Github is taking an niche subject matter, packaging it up for a more general audience, and then distributing it worldwide?
- ketralnis 7y ago
  No? This is taking copyrighted material owned by somebody else and distributing it to people that haven't paid for it.
  - alunchbox 7y ago
    From a legal standpoint, based on the article most of these developers are keeping the fonts in their assets (debatable if this is good or not).For public repositories, not to be malicious and be offer free fonts... How much trouble would they be in? I Assume this is probably possible for FontAwesome premium icons as well ? Having the server host the assets is probably the best solution (same rep) but if it's not in Git then it needs to be managed in the build for other open source developers. What's the Correct way of handling this situation?
    - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
      > it needs to be managed in the build for other open source developers. What's the Correct way of handling this situation? I would rather expect an open source project to use open-source fonts in the first place, not least because it makes this precise problem a non-issue.
  - na85 7y ago
    So is using the font on a website.
jchw 7y ago
Interestingly, typefaces are not copyrightable in the US, though fonts, being computer code, can be. Not sure how this influences the situation, though.
- Nextgrid 7y ago
  Wouldn’t it then be legal to make your own font (so you own the copyright on the computer code) representing a commercial typeface?
  - pavlov 7y ago
    Yes. That’s why Windows bundled Arial instead of Helvetica. Although the design of Arial is slightly modified, it’s fundamentally a straightforward Helvetica clone with metrics compatibility (you can plug it in a layout in place of Helvetica and not break anything).
    - c3534l 7y ago
      You have it wrong. Arial was created to not have to bother with international typeface laws as a legally distinct Helvetica. Apple just paid the licensing fees in those countries where they were required to.
      - bduerst 7y ago
        You are both right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica#Arial_and_MS_Sans_Serif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica#Arial_and_MS_Sans_Se...
    - amyjess 7y ago
      Arial is a bizarre case: it's actually Monotype Grotesque stretched and pinched to match the proportions of Helvetica. So you can replace Helvetica with Arial in any document and it'll still print right, but at its core the letterforms are just distorted Grotesque MT. And it's not the only font Microsoft and Monotype collaborated on like this. For example, Century Gothic is Monotype's Twentieth Century distorted to match ITC Avant Garde's metrics.
Gracana 7y ago
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.
- wnevets 7y ago
  IANAL but I believe you may have a license (paid money) to use the font on your site but you may not have a licence redistribute the font. You paid for the right to air the latest UFC fight at your bar but that doesn't grant you the ability to sale DVDs of it. However a user of yours could just download the font from your web server or record the fight on their phone.
  - c3534l 7y ago
    But it's not like a webpage renders an image for you and then you rend an image: you send the user a font so that they can render the page themselves with that font. It's being distributed either way.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      Correct. Article OP is making the argument for a font to be treated as a secret when it is not a secret. Intent and context is important; users aren't putting them up on torrent sites in this case, but simply storing them alongside the rest of their assets in source control. EDIT: TLDR Downloading a publicly available font you don't have a license to use violates copyright.
      - roywiggins 7y ago
        Accidentally exposing a folder of copyrighted font files over FTP would probably technically violate the license, even if it was by accident. You're serving the files outside of the licensed use (serving and rendering a webpage). Same as if you accidentally exposed to the internet your home server of legally-created DVD backups. You'd still be violating the license under which you bought the DVDs.
jzunit 7y ago
Been doing searches for "site:github.com <fontname>.ttf" for years. This is a feature not a bug.
- Brendinooo 7y ago
  Yikes. You ever try making a font? Do you know how many hours it takes and what kind of profit margins you're eating into?
  - oh_sigh 7y ago
    It entirely depends on how OP was using the fonts.
  - jzunit 7y ago
    The profit margins we are eating into is exactly ZERO. Why? because if most of the time i need to actually pay for it, i'll just use the cheaper alternative: Google Fonts. There will be times when I need to use this font and make something that will go live. That's the time to buy a font. If font making is not profitable, then don't make fonts.
    - Brendinooo 7y ago
      This attitude is absolutely bonkers. Someone is making a product and telling you what you can and cannot do with it, and then you decide that none of that applies to you, because...I don't know, you're entitled to use it if you happen to see it? "There will be times when I need to use this font and make something that will go live. That's the time to buy a font." - that depends on the license that the font foundry grants you. "If font making is not profitable [due to lost sales via piracy], then don't make fonts"...some kind of mental gymnastics there. "I will take freely from you and if you can't afford to let me do that, it's your fault for making it in the first place" is a tough ground to stand on.
      - jzunit 7y ago
        Most of the people who are taking your fonts are also making a product. We understand the need to make a living and the difficulty of making a product. I hope you get paid for what you do but you don't get to decide the market size for your product when it is a digital good. The market does. There is a market for paid specialty fonts used on a website. People should pay for that. However, there is not much of a market for paid fonts used in Sketch when developers and designers are testing out different concepts they MIGHT use in production. You complaining that you are failing to monetizing off that non-existent market is completely bonkers for me. The ground I stand on is reality. You're living in a fantasy land where musicians still get paid big dollars for records and where journalism is a lucrative career.
stefan_ 7y ago
Wait until they find out that when people visit the finished website in their browser, it will download the font! Oh the piracy! Just like in the real world, someone handing you the keys to their car doesn't mean you own it.
- sp332 7y ago
  The legal issue is with the repo owner putting it in the repo. The problem is that it's a violation of the copyright license, that's the only reason it's an issue. Downloading the font file from the website is included in the license, so it's fine.
  - deleted 7y ago
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  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    If the repo is the source for the website then the license is de facto forbidding people from open sourcing their websites if they pay for a font for it. However the license does not explicitly limit the tools you can use to build the website, and the website is allowed by the license to have the font. The argument could be made by licensing the font for a website they have implicitly licensed it to be on github because it is a widely used tool for managing the source code of websites and if they (the font owners) wanted to restrict its usage they should have specified.
    - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
      Either: You can open source the website without the font and say you open sourced your website, or if you consider the font part of your website, it means your website isn't open source... even if you put it on GitHub. Because it's a copyright violation for someone to use that font. Your best bet is to just use open source fonts, of which there are numerous.
      - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
skilled 7y ago
I'm guilty of having searched GitHub's repositories for fonts I like. Using them for personal projects and wouldn't mind paying for a license if I end up loving it. Though, it begs the question: who and how will find out that you simply borrowed the font?
- Andrex 7y ago
  Maybe in the future, a type foundry creates a font-specific webcrawler that compares GitHub usernames or public email addresses to a list of known buyers of the font in question, and then sends them a C&D if they're violating the license.
- rstupek 7y ago
  You'd be surprised. Companies exist to scan the web looking for copyrighted works on behalf of companies and send out demand letters for payment.
- mattkevan 7y ago
  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 amount of cash.
  - cwkoss 7y ago
    Companies which depend on IP trolling for their primary revenue always end up being extortionists who drain society without producing further value.
    - mattkevan 7y ago
      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.
deleted 7y ago
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applecrazy 7y ago
There should be a (2017) in the title. Thought this was something new.
chaosfox 7y ago
I wonder what would happen if the copyright holder of helvetica sent a DMCA notice to github.
- JorgeGT 7y ago
  Well, this repository mentioned in the article comments got DMCA'd: https://github.com/r4in/typefaces https://github.com/r4in/typefaces
calimac 7y ago
Lame article
lol768 7y ago
Don't PDFs and Word documents embed fonts, too?
- roywiggins 7y ago
  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-agreement/ https://processtypefoundry.com/help/base/webfont-license-agr...
  - lol768 7y ago
    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.
    - roywiggins 7y ago
      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.
mcrider 7y ago
I've been doing this for years -- Its a PIA dealing with each font foundry's DRM system and getting it to work on my local dev environment. When I go live, I deal with it but its also such a hassle to get clients to pay for a font, give me the required info to use the foundry's DRM, etc. I bet if a foundry used an honor system (give fonts away for free, charge a per-site license for commercial use) they'd still make a profit and not have to deal with complex DRM systems (and make it more likely for designers and developers to use their fonts).
- ryukafalz 7y ago
  Wait, this is a thing? If I were ever asked to install some DRM to render a font I'd nuke that thing from my system in a heartbeat.
  - mcrider 7y ago
    I use the term DRM loosely (possibly incorrectly!). What I mean is that most font foundries make you include a CSS or JS file that only loads the requested fonts for a domain or domains you specify in their backend.
gregmac 7y ago
If I use a commercial font as part of my website design, I am in fact publishing that font on my site and anyone can obtain a copy of it -- in fact, they automatically do merely by visiting my site! Does this mean all my visitors are "pirating"? Of course not. Github may make the font more accessible/searchable, but that doesn't change anything about the copyright status of the font. Me publishing something on Github does not grant everyone free rights to it -- in fact, copyright law says no one has rights to it unless I specifically grant those rights. This is most commonly done with a LICENSE file. The copyright rules apply to everything in the repository, including my code, and any fonts, icons or stock images. The fact something is on Github (or the internet, in general) doesn't make it public domain, you still have to abide by the license terms. While I think the suggestion that "on github" = "piracy" is stupid, I could see a couple things that could apply: (1) If the license for the font explicitly states it's for "use" or "distribution" on a single domain. Unless the license is clear about it, it'd really be up to lawyers to argue over whether hosting the code in a public repository on Github can be considered "use" or "distribution" -- and ultimately that argument is about one non-authenticating public URL being okay while another non-authenticating public URL is not. (2) If I've put a commercial font in my repository along with a typical LICENSE file containing MIT/GPL/BSD/whatever without explicitly stating the fonts are not under that license, then I'm basically mis-representing the license for that font (which I should not be allowed to do). Given that putting a font on Github is technically no different from publishing on my site in terms of someone being able to 'pirate' it, personally I think a Github repository with a proper license (not doing (2)) is fine, because the LICENSE file effectively says it's not okay to just copy that font.
- yeahforsureman 7y ago
  The article is obviously mainly referring to font files under desktop font licenses that certainly don't usually allow publishing the files on Github or serving them as part of your site. (While irrelevant: As for the technical difference or lack of between the two, from a license drafting perspective, it wouldn't really matter since you could easily write in the distinction to eg. the allowed purpose part of the license grant.)
  - 7y ago
dbg31415 7y ago
Funny story, I was working with an enterprise-sized company, a major telcom, and we found out that we had used the "wrong" version of the font everywhere. The original font was like "My Font" and the font we had used was the "Pro My Font" that had a bunch of extra symbols and such in it and was higher-priced. But we used it everywhere, for years. And it would have been a huge hassle to change it all. So we emailed the designer and were like, "Look, we didn't intend to screw you, but we also didn't really budget the $450k in estimated licenses we'd need here... how about we pay you like $30k extra and call it good?" Anyway, long story short, the small-time designer guy was thrilled to get $30k, and turns out he wasn't at all even monitoring for pirated versions of his font anywhere... he didn't have any idea who had bought his font, so to him it was just some random big company offering to give him free money. The places that sell fonts should do a better job of passing on payment (obviously) to designers, but also a list of who bought their fonts so they can take some pride in knowing where their designs are being used.
jrockway 7y ago
Yeah I'm a big fan of people's dotfile directories for trying out fonts. I remember some HN discussion about a proprietary font that was pretty good for programming. I was on the fence on whether or not I wanted it, just by looking at screenshots. So I used Github search to find someone that dumped it in their home directory, downloaded it, and tried it out. I hated it! So I saved money thanks to this piracy. (I use Iosevka now. Wow it's good.)
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OrwellianChild 7y ago
This is kind of an adjacent question, and likely a very basic one, but if I wanted to avoid linking out to a web font repository by properly licensing one and self-hosting it, what even is the correct procedure?
JohnTHaller 7y ago
Github is home to a ton of pirated content. Including closed source binaries repackaged in violation of the publishers' licenses. But Github won't do anything unless the copyright-holder submits a DMCA takedown notice.
- akersten 7y ago
  As it should be! That's the most beautiful part of the DMCA, allowing sites to operate without having to police every bit of user-uploaded content, only requiring that violations are removed after having been alerted to them. Could you imagine an upload filter or moderation queue before you were allowed to push code to GitHub?
JackFr 7y ago
Ironically I found the typeface of this post to be poorly rendered, distracting and less pleasant to read than the usual web fare.
open-source-ux 7y ago
What a depressing thread. The general consensus (at the time of submitting this comment) is that posters don't care if commercial fonts are hosted on GitHub in violation of their licence. Many professional fonts are the work of a single type designer who may have spent thousands of hours creating the typeface. Modern typefaces can have a dozen or more weights and hundreds of glyphs. It's hard work and time-consuming to create a professional type family. It's depressing to come here and see how little people care for the work of other professions.
- darkpuma 7y ago
  Nobody is entitled to a flawed business model. Not developers of proprietary software, and not designers of proprietary typefaces.
- Gattsu 7y ago
  It really is. Most of the developers here probably make twice as much as the average independent type designer, yet they insist on distributing their work without consent.
ouid 7y ago
This article is: 1) pedantic 2) wrong 3) about fonts 4) written by a copyright narc I simply do not understand its presence or popularity here.
pmoriarty 7y ago
I've always found it interesting how the term "piracy" has been mostly unquestioningly accepted by the media as the appropriate term to use for copying, which arguably doesn't steal anything (unlike what has traditionally been known as piracy before the digital age).
- the_pwner224 7y ago
  Sharing is an even better term than copying; spreading information like this actively creates value by exposing more people to these ideas and designs. Not that I don't think the foundries should get paid for their work - I don't have a fully formed opinion on this. But there is a definite upside to sharing information freely, and this is better than mere copying.
  - floatboth 7y ago
    Just like all software, there's a lot of Free Software fonts and that's not incompatible with money. For example, back in 2012, I supported three SIL OFL licensed fonts on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/typesenses/font-design-euphoria-script https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/typesenses/font-design-... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/impallari/fast-brush-script https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/impallari/fast-brush-sc... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marcelommp/folk-is-a-great-font-lets-complete-it https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marcelommp/folk-is-a-gr...
mesozoic 7y ago
Ah the old archaic copyright system butting heads with reality.
King-Aaron 7y ago
Wow, I never thought of stealing fonts via github. Thanks, Barbra Streisand.
gingabriska 7y ago
Why not fetch the fonts from the source they list as a part of the build process? That way you aren't distributing but pointing the interested ones to the source website. Or am I missing anything here?
cogburnd02 7y ago
Let's all just take a moment to remember that the design of fonts (in the US) is NOT copyrightable. The only reason vector fonts are copyrightable at all is a raging dumpster-fire called Adobe v Southern. [1] [2] The case itself says this: "defendants contend that the numerical reference points that define an outline of a glyph are unprotectable as a matter of law" but then "the court finds that the Adobe font software programs are protectable original works of authorship." Note: when they say "font software programs" here, they simply mean a vector (say, ttf) font file rather than a bitmap (say, bdf or pcf) font file. David 'Novalis' Turner probably put it best when he wrote this: "A font face -- that is, the look of a font, is not copyrightable... But font 'programs' (truetype fonts, for example) are. Another ruling has extended the definition of 'programs' to include certain outline data. Why this outline data is not equivalent to a font face, nobody knows." [3] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20100522133154/http://lw.bna.com/lw/19980303/9520710.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20100522133154/http://lw.bna.com... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Systems,_Inc._v._Southern_Software,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Systems,_Inc._v._Souther.... [3] https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/20050425novalis https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/20050425novalis
tripzilch 7y ago
I get why they're worried but really the problem started with web fonts. The font file is published on the web page itself, just like the images, CSS, etc. So everybody could already grab it from the web page itself, and in fact this is what the browser does automatically, in order to render the font. It's the whole point. It doesn't really matter if it's committed to public github.

178 points by plibither8 7y ago

Is this "piracy" in the sense of Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean?" Like, Github is taking an niche subject matter, packaging it up for a more general audience, and then distributing it worldwide?

ketralnis 7y ago
No? This is taking copyrighted material owned by somebody else and distributing it to people that haven't paid for it.
- alunchbox 7y ago
  From a legal standpoint, based on the article most of these developers are keeping the fonts in their assets (debatable if this is good or not).For public repositories, not to be malicious and be offer free fonts... How much trouble would they be in? I Assume this is probably possible for FontAwesome premium icons as well ? Having the server host the assets is probably the best solution (same rep) but if it's not in Git then it needs to be managed in the build for other open source developers. What's the Correct way of handling this situation?
  - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    > it needs to be managed in the build for other open source developers. What's the Correct way of handling this situation? I would rather expect an open source project to use open-source fonts in the first place, not least because it makes this precise problem a non-issue.
- na85 7y ago
  So is using the font on a website.

jchw 7y ago

Interestingly, typefaces are not copyrightable in the US, though fonts, being computer code, can be. Not sure how this influences the situation, though.

Nextgrid 7y ago
Wouldn’t it then be legal to make your own font (so you own the copyright on the computer code) representing a commercial typeface?
- pavlov 7y ago
  Yes. That’s why Windows bundled Arial instead of Helvetica. Although the design of Arial is slightly modified, it’s fundamentally a straightforward Helvetica clone with metrics compatibility (you can plug it in a layout in place of Helvetica and not break anything).
  - c3534l 7y ago
    You have it wrong. Arial was created to not have to bother with international typeface laws as a legally distinct Helvetica. Apple just paid the licensing fees in those countries where they were required to.
    - bduerst 7y ago
      You are both right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica#Arial_and_MS_Sans_Serif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica#Arial_and_MS_Sans_Se...
  - amyjess 7y ago
    Arial is a bizarre case: it's actually Monotype Grotesque stretched and pinched to match the proportions of Helvetica. So you can replace Helvetica with Arial in any document and it'll still print right, but at its core the letterforms are just distorted Grotesque MT. And it's not the only font Microsoft and Monotype collaborated on like this. For example, Century Gothic is Monotype's Twentieth Century distorted to match ITC Avant Garde's metrics.

Gracana 7y ago

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.

wnevets 7y ago
IANAL but I believe you may have a license (paid money) to use the font on your site but you may not have a licence redistribute the font. You paid for the right to air the latest UFC fight at your bar but that doesn't grant you the ability to sale DVDs of it. However a user of yours could just download the font from your web server or record the fight on their phone.
- c3534l 7y ago
  But it's not like a webpage renders an image for you and then you rend an image: you send the user a font so that they can render the page themselves with that font. It's being distributed either way.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Correct. Article OP is making the argument for a font to be treated as a secret when it is not a secret. Intent and context is important; users aren't putting them up on torrent sites in this case, but simply storing them alongside the rest of their assets in source control. EDIT: TLDR Downloading a publicly available font you don't have a license to use violates copyright.
    - roywiggins 7y ago
      Accidentally exposing a folder of copyrighted font files over FTP would probably technically violate the license, even if it was by accident. You're serving the files outside of the licensed use (serving and rendering a webpage). Same as if you accidentally exposed to the internet your home server of legally-created DVD backups. You'd still be violating the license under which you bought the DVDs.

jzunit 7y ago

Been doing searches for "site:github.com <fontname>.ttf" for years. This is a feature not a bug.

Brendinooo 7y ago
Yikes. You ever try making a font? Do you know how many hours it takes and what kind of profit margins you're eating into?
- oh_sigh 7y ago
  It entirely depends on how OP was using the fonts.
- jzunit 7y ago
  The profit margins we are eating into is exactly ZERO. Why? because if most of the time i need to actually pay for it, i'll just use the cheaper alternative: Google Fonts. There will be times when I need to use this font and make something that will go live. That's the time to buy a font. If font making is not profitable, then don't make fonts.
  - Brendinooo 7y ago
    This attitude is absolutely bonkers. Someone is making a product and telling you what you can and cannot do with it, and then you decide that none of that applies to you, because...I don't know, you're entitled to use it if you happen to see it? "There will be times when I need to use this font and make something that will go live. That's the time to buy a font." - that depends on the license that the font foundry grants you. "If font making is not profitable [due to lost sales via piracy], then don't make fonts"...some kind of mental gymnastics there. "I will take freely from you and if you can't afford to let me do that, it's your fault for making it in the first place" is a tough ground to stand on.
    - jzunit 7y ago
      Most of the people who are taking your fonts are also making a product. We understand the need to make a living and the difficulty of making a product. I hope you get paid for what you do but you don't get to decide the market size for your product when it is a digital good. The market does. There is a market for paid specialty fonts used on a website. People should pay for that. However, there is not much of a market for paid fonts used in Sketch when developers and designers are testing out different concepts they MIGHT use in production. You complaining that you are failing to monetizing off that non-existent market is completely bonkers for me. The ground I stand on is reality. You're living in a fantasy land where musicians still get paid big dollars for records and where journalism is a lucrative career.

stefan_ 7y ago

Wait until they find out that when people visit the finished website in their browser, it will download the font! Oh the piracy! Just like in the real world, someone handing you the keys to their car doesn't mean you own it.

sp332 7y ago
The legal issue is with the repo owner putting it in the repo. The problem is that it's a violation of the copyright license, that's the only reason it's an issue. Downloading the font file from the website is included in the license, so it's fine.
- deleted 7y ago
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- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  If the repo is the source for the website then the license is de facto forbidding people from open sourcing their websites if they pay for a font for it. However the license does not explicitly limit the tools you can use to build the website, and the website is allowed by the license to have the font. The argument could be made by licensing the font for a website they have implicitly licensed it to be on github because it is a widely used tool for managing the source code of websites and if they (the font owners) wanted to restrict its usage they should have specified.
  - ocdtrekkie 7y ago
    Either: You can open source the website without the font and say you open sourced your website, or if you consider the font part of your website, it means your website isn't open source... even if you put it on GitHub. Because it's a copyright violation for someone to use that font. Your best bet is to just use open source fonts, of which there are numerous.
    - bryanrasmussen 7y ago

skilled 7y ago

I'm guilty of having searched GitHub's repositories for fonts I like. Using them for personal projects and wouldn't mind paying for a license if I end up loving it. Though, it begs the question: who and how will find out that you simply borrowed the font?

Andrex 7y ago
Maybe in the future, a type foundry creates a font-specific webcrawler that compares GitHub usernames or public email addresses to a list of known buyers of the font in question, and then sends them a C&D if they're violating the license.
rstupek 7y ago
You'd be surprised. Companies exist to scan the web looking for copyrighted works on behalf of companies and send out demand letters for payment.
mattkevan 7y ago
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 amount of cash.
- cwkoss 7y ago
  Companies which depend on IP trolling for their primary revenue always end up being extortionists who drain society without producing further value.
  - mattkevan 7y ago
    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.

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applecrazy 7y ago

There should be a (2017) in the title. Thought this was something new.

chaosfox 7y ago

I wonder what would happen if the copyright holder of helvetica sent a DMCA notice to github.

JorgeGT 7y ago
Well, this repository mentioned in the article comments got DMCA'd: https://github.com/r4in/typefaces https://github.com/r4in/typefaces

calimac 7y ago

Lame article

lol768 7y ago

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

roywiggins 7y ago
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-agreement/ https://processtypefoundry.com/help/base/webfont-license-agr...
- lol768 7y ago
  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.
  - roywiggins 7y ago
    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.

mcrider 7y ago

I've been doing this for years -- Its a PIA dealing with each font foundry's DRM system and getting it to work on my local dev environment. When I go live, I deal with it but its also such a hassle to get clients to pay for a font, give me the required info to use the foundry's DRM, etc. I bet if a foundry used an honor system (give fonts away for free, charge a per-site license for commercial use) they'd still make a profit and not have to deal with complex DRM systems (and make it more likely for designers and developers to use their fonts).

ryukafalz 7y ago
Wait, this is a thing? If I were ever asked to install some DRM to render a font I'd nuke that thing from my system in a heartbeat.
- mcrider 7y ago
  I use the term DRM loosely (possibly incorrectly!). What I mean is that most font foundries make you include a CSS or JS file that only loads the requested fonts for a domain or domains you specify in their backend.

gregmac 7y ago

If I use a commercial font as part of my website design, I am in fact publishing that font on my site and anyone can obtain a copy of it -- in fact, they automatically do merely by visiting my site! Does this mean all my visitors are "pirating"? Of course not. Github may make the font more accessible/searchable, but that doesn't change anything about the copyright status of the font. Me publishing something on Github does not grant everyone free rights to it -- in fact, copyright law says no one has rights to it unless I specifically grant those rights. This is most commonly done with a LICENSE file. The copyright rules apply to everything in the repository, including my code, and any fonts, icons or stock images. The fact something is on Github (or the internet, in general) doesn't make it public domain, you still have to abide by the license terms. While I think the suggestion that "on github" = "piracy" is stupid, I could see a couple things that could apply: (1) If the license for the font explicitly states it's for "use" or "distribution" on a single domain. Unless the license is clear about it, it'd really be up to lawyers to argue over whether hosting the code in a public repository on Github can be considered "use" or "distribution" -- and ultimately that argument is about one non-authenticating public URL being okay while another non-authenticating public URL is not. (2) If I've put a commercial font in my repository along with a typical LICENSE file containing MIT/GPL/BSD/whatever without explicitly stating the fonts are not under that license, then I'm basically mis-representing the license for that font (which I should not be allowed to do). Given that putting a font on Github is technically no different from publishing on my site in terms of someone being able to 'pirate' it, personally I think a Github repository with a proper license (not doing (2)) is fine, because the LICENSE file effectively says it's not okay to just copy that font.

yeahforsureman 7y ago
The article is obviously mainly referring to font files under desktop font licenses that certainly don't usually allow publishing the files on Github or serving them as part of your site. (While irrelevant: As for the technical difference or lack of between the two, from a license drafting perspective, it wouldn't really matter since you could easily write in the distinction to eg. the allowed purpose part of the license grant.)
- 7y ago

dbg31415 7y ago

Funny story, I was working with an enterprise-sized company, a major telcom, and we found out that we had used the "wrong" version of the font everywhere. The original font was like "My Font" and the font we had used was the "Pro My Font" that had a bunch of extra symbols and such in it and was higher-priced. But we used it everywhere, for years. And it would have been a huge hassle to change it all. So we emailed the designer and were like, "Look, we didn't intend to screw you, but we also didn't really budget the $450k in estimated licenses we'd need here... how about we pay you like $30k extra and call it good?" Anyway, long story short, the small-time designer guy was thrilled to get $30k, and turns out he wasn't at all even monitoring for pirated versions of his font anywhere... he didn't have any idea who had bought his font, so to him it was just some random big company offering to give him free money. The places that sell fonts should do a better job of passing on payment (obviously) to designers, but also a list of who bought their fonts so they can take some pride in knowing where their designs are being used.

jrockway 7y ago

Yeah I'm a big fan of people's dotfile directories for trying out fonts. I remember some HN discussion about a proprietary font that was pretty good for programming. I was on the fence on whether or not I wanted it, just by looking at screenshots. So I used Github search to find someone that dumped it in their home directory, downloaded it, and tried it out. I hated it! So I saved money thanks to this piracy. (I use Iosevka now. Wow it's good.)

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OrwellianChild 7y ago

This is kind of an adjacent question, and likely a very basic one, but if I wanted to avoid linking out to a web font repository by properly licensing one and self-hosting it, what even is the correct procedure?

JohnTHaller 7y ago

Github is home to a ton of pirated content. Including closed source binaries repackaged in violation of the publishers' licenses. But Github won't do anything unless the copyright-holder submits a DMCA takedown notice.

akersten 7y ago
As it should be! That's the most beautiful part of the DMCA, allowing sites to operate without having to police every bit of user-uploaded content, only requiring that violations are removed after having been alerted to them. Could you imagine an upload filter or moderation queue before you were allowed to push code to GitHub?

JackFr 7y ago

Ironically I found the typeface of this post to be poorly rendered, distracting and less pleasant to read than the usual web fare.

open-source-ux 7y ago

What a depressing thread. The general consensus (at the time of submitting this comment) is that posters don't care if commercial fonts are hosted on GitHub in violation of their licence. Many professional fonts are the work of a single type designer who may have spent thousands of hours creating the typeface. Modern typefaces can have a dozen or more weights and hundreds of glyphs. It's hard work and time-consuming to create a professional type family. It's depressing to come here and see how little people care for the work of other professions.

darkpuma 7y ago
Nobody is entitled to a flawed business model. Not developers of proprietary software, and not designers of proprietary typefaces.
Gattsu 7y ago
It really is. Most of the developers here probably make twice as much as the average independent type designer, yet they insist on distributing their work without consent.

ouid 7y ago

This article is: 1) pedantic 2) wrong 3) about fonts 4) written by a copyright narc I simply do not understand its presence or popularity here.

pmoriarty 7y ago

I've always found it interesting how the term "piracy" has been mostly unquestioningly accepted by the media as the appropriate term to use for copying, which arguably doesn't steal anything (unlike what has traditionally been known as piracy before the digital age).

the_pwner224 7y ago
Sharing is an even better term than copying; spreading information like this actively creates value by exposing more people to these ideas and designs. Not that I don't think the foundries should get paid for their work - I don't have a fully formed opinion on this. But there is a definite upside to sharing information freely, and this is better than mere copying.
- floatboth 7y ago
  Just like all software, there's a lot of Free Software fonts and that's not incompatible with money. For example, back in 2012, I supported three SIL OFL licensed fonts on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/typesenses/font-design-euphoria-script https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/typesenses/font-design-... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/impallari/fast-brush-script https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/impallari/fast-brush-sc... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marcelommp/folk-is-a-great-font-lets-complete-it https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/marcelommp/folk-is-a-gr...

mesozoic 7y ago

Ah the old archaic copyright system butting heads with reality.

King-Aaron 7y ago

Wow, I never thought of stealing fonts via github. Thanks, Barbra Streisand.

gingabriska 7y ago

Why not fetch the fonts from the source they list as a part of the build process? That way you aren't distributing but pointing the interested ones to the source website. Or am I missing anything here?

cogburnd02 7y ago

Let's all just take a moment to remember that the design of fonts (in the US) is NOT copyrightable. The only reason vector fonts are copyrightable at all is a raging dumpster-fire called Adobe v Southern. [1] [2] The case itself says this: "defendants contend that the numerical reference points that define an outline of a glyph are unprotectable as a matter of law" but then "the court finds that the Adobe font software programs are protectable original works of authorship." Note: when they say "font software programs" here, they simply mean a vector (say, ttf) font file rather than a bitmap (say, bdf or pcf) font file. David 'Novalis' Turner probably put it best when he wrote this: "A font face -- that is, the look of a font, is not copyrightable... But font 'programs' (truetype fonts, for example) are. Another ruling has extended the definition of 'programs' to include certain outline data. Why this outline data is not equivalent to a font face, nobody knows." [3] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20100522133154/http://lw.bna.com/lw/19980303/9520710.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20100522133154/http://lw.bna.com... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Systems,_Inc._v._Southern_Software,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Systems,_Inc._v._Souther.... [3] https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/20050425novalis https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/20050425novalis

tripzilch 7y ago

I get why they're worried but really the problem started with web fonts. The font file is published on the web page itself, just like the images, CSS, etc. So everybody could already grab it from the web page itself, and in fact this is what the browser does automatically, in order to render the font. It's the whole point. It doesn't really matter if it's committed to public github.