10 ms·

> Unfortunately it is expensive, and you can't just buy it and use it, you have to renew the license annually. Not even that. If you want it for a web page you

> Unfortunately it is expensive, and you can't just buy it and use it, you have to renew the license annually. Not even that. If you want it for a web page you have to pay in blocks of page views. In my mind that moves it from "eh" to "LOL no". These are licensing terms for people who want the name.

alexwennerberg 5y ago
Typefaces should not be copyrightable. Print ones are not, it makes no sense that digital ones are.
- croes 5y ago
  Print fonts are copyrightable.
  - flowerlad 5y ago
    In the United States, the shapes of typefaces are not eligible for copyright. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti...
    - da_chicken 5y ago
      Ah, so that's how knock-off fonts work. You can reproduce essentially the same output (the typeface) as long as the code that produces it is distinct (the font).
    - croes 5y ago
      But in France and Germany but not Austria despite the Vienna Agreement for the Protection of Type Faces and their International Deposit. http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/dfat/seldoc/1973/2203.html http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/dfat/seldoc/1973/2203.htm...
- pkaye 5y ago
  The digital one is considered as code. In some countries even the print one has copyright.
- mdip 5y ago
  > Fonts should not be copyrightable. Print fonts are not, it makes no sense that digital ones are. I agree with your first statement, except that I'm stuck re-wording it to "I wish fonts weren't copyrightable" because I can't find an argument/proper analogy that works. I don't know the details around copyright law, IANAL (surprise!) either, so I'm looking at this from an incredibly naive legal perspective -- that almost everything is copyrightable (in the United States) except for facts. Since copyright law predates digital fonts, you have to look at things they are most like to see what applies (and find a judge to agree, but that part seems to be the simple). Print fonts are not copyrightable. I'm not sure why they're not copyrightable -- were they explicitly excluded (i.e. there's a law on the books that says "Print fonts are not copyrightable"[0]) or were they found to be "like this other thing that is excluded, so they are excluded, too". Then, looking at what's similar about print fonts versus digital ones, there's not really a whole lot other than that they're "concepts" that represent letters in this context. One is chiseled out of some form of metal or strong material, is that size/shape permanently and though there's science/research behind it, for whatever reason, it didn't represent enough of a kind of work to warrant protection. A font has a lot in common on the surface, but underneath it's a program[1]. One could extend that to say "bitmap fonts are so similar to print fonts that they should be excluded" but one cannot say the same for TTF/others and I'd imagine. The bigger problem, though, is that exclusions to copyright are basically never made any longer. This used to be more common, but the entertainment industry's money/power continues to extend copyright in ways that benefit them to the exclusion of other industries -- particularly software -- the large players have a lot of money, so a law that was designed to equally protect invention/creation (really, patent law was by-and-large aimed at helping individual inventors protect their invention/give them a chance to capitalize it against abusive larger competition) ends up helping secure the existing players positions. Now, I don't know if anyone wants Warner Brothers to make Mickey Mouse cartoons, but I suspect there's a less heavy-handed approach to protecting long-held IP while not extending copyright, basically, indefinitely for everything. So yeah, all of that to say "No, I don't think fonts should be copyrightable, either ... but I can say that for so many things and there's so much wrong with Copyright these days that it warrants revisiting a reset/rethink." Maybe one day! [0] It won't be that sentence, it'll be a page worth of explaining why it doesn't fall into the various defined kinds of works. [1] TTF hinting is turing complete.
- mikedc 5y ago
  In the US, "typefaces", ie. the shapes of the letters, generally are not. "Fonts", ie. the programs that draw the letters, are copyrighted as software, as something of a workaround. For more reading on the history here Typographica has a succinct overview[0]. [0] https://typographica.org/on-typography/copyright-protection-of-typefaces/ https://typographica.org/on-typography/copyright-protection-...
  - tomrod 5y ago
    Point stands. These ought to not be royalty driven.
    - mikedc 5y ago
      I'm not sure I follow. Whether or not the typeface is eligible for copyright, the pricing model and terms of use are at the discretion of the font creator.
      - chipotle_coyote 5y ago
        "How a font is sold is up to the discretion of the font creator" and "a font should not be sold on a sliding cost scale" aren't mutually exclusive -- the latter's pretty clearly asserting an opinion about reasonable pricing models and terms of use. There are a lot of things people do that they're perfectly within their rights to do that someone else might strongly believe they shouldn't, right? Personally, I don't like the idea of selling fonts with costs governed by web page impressions, either, no matter how common it may be in the industry. I genuinely like having what I consider to be nice typefaces for my web sites, but this kind of licensing makes it incredibly impractical for me to use most commercial options.
        mikedc 5y ago
        Of course, but the "point" in question is whether a typeface (or font) should be copyrightable.
  - alberth 5y ago
- dhosek 5y ago
  That type designs are not protected is a gross injustice. The time and effort involved in creating a type design is significant. Alas, when the type industry had the resources to lobby to have copyright law changed, they were making a lot of money from stealing each others' designs and chose to lobby the opposite. There was an ill-fated effort in the 90s to lobby for typeface design protection (I was part of it as the editor of a typography magazine) but it never achieved any measurable success.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Igelau 5y ago
    It's not worth the hell that would ensue with people suing each other because their letters look too similar. Letters have to look similar -- that's the whole damn point!
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    That art styles are not protected is a gross injustice. The time and effort involved in creating an art style is significant. Alas, when the art industry had the resources to lobby to have copyright law changed… Type designs not being protected by copyright has benefits, too. Afaik, they're still protected by patent. (Not everything has to be copyright law! That's something the “intellectual property” lobby seems to be wilfully ignoring.)
    - dhosek 5y ago
      A design patent is available, but the bar for a design patent is very high and the income for most type designs is enough to maybe buy a nice dinner for two.¹ Copyright registration is easy and cheap.³ People who argue against type design copyright fall into at least one of three camps: (a) they have no idea what it takes to make a good typeface, (b) their ability to distinguish typefaces doesn't go much farther than distinguishing sans/serif/monospace (if even that), and/or (c) they hope to be able to use other people's designs for their own benefit. 1. Retail sales of typefaces is a ridiculously unprofitable business, which is part of why every nearly independent foundry/type reseller of measurable size is ending up under the umbrella of Monotype Imaging. The handful of designers who have made a living from type design either are employed as staff designers for Adobe/Microsoft/Monotype, do high-value custom designs for publishing clients (although these are becoming increasingly scarce as publishers who still do print are less willing to spend money on quality²) or, the big one but probably gone for good now, embedded fonts in printers (Arthur Baker's deal with HP, he claimed, left him set for life financially). 2. A big part of Font Bureau's early capital came from producing a custom version of Palatino for the gravure pages of Playboy that would match the printed output on the offset pages. There's probably a whole book to be written about the ways in which Hugh Hefner spent Playboy money in ways that nominally benefited the magazine but had a bigger impact in providing cash to artistic endeavors (most notably writers) that wouldn't otherwise see much money. 3. And optional. If registration occurs after an infringement, the copyright holder can only sue for actual damages. Pre-infringement registration also entitles the copyright holder to sue for punitive damages.
- amelius 5y ago
  From: https://glarts.org/font-and-typeface-legal-tip-sheet/ https://glarts.org/font-and-typeface-legal-tip-sheet/ > In the United States, fonts are protectable under copyright law. Typefaces, however, are not. ... A trademark protects what a typeface is called, a copyright protects how a font program is written, and a design patent protects letter design—how the letters appear. So if I understand this correctly, then unless they have a design patent for the entire range of typefaces, you could use some of the typefaces if you use a different encoding. Perhaps someone with legal background can comment.
m-p-3 5y ago
That's ridiculous..
stimpson_j_cat 5y ago
That's a standard practice for a lot of webfont vendors isn't it? I know it was for Typekit/Adobe Fonts (which requires a Creative Cloud subscription).
- oefrha 5y ago
  What even is Typekit’s pricing these days? I looked into it a few weeks ago and the only thing I could find was Typekit comes with any Creative Cloud subscription, including $10/mo ones. But surely you can’t pay $10/mo to serve an arbitrary amount from their webfont CDN? Did I miss something? Is the pricing only available after you subscribe?
  - paulddraper 5y ago
    As far as I know, that is the deal.
  - zippergz 5y ago
    I have Typekit via Creative Cloud, use web fonts on my site, and have not run into any additional fees or restrictions. That said, my site is pretty low-traffic, so it's possible there's some issue I'd run into if I used it more.
  - lstamour 5y ago
    Since the 2018 rebranding to Adobe Fonts, there are no pageview or font limits for subscribers: https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/plan-limits.html https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/plan-limits.html Agency clients need their own subscription, legally: https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/font-licensing.html#web-client https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/font-licensing.html#web-...
  - danrodney 5y ago
    There are no limits on pageviews https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/plan-limits.html https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/plan-limits.html And it's actually cheaper... for $4.99/month you get an InCopy subscription which includes Adobe Fonts. That's the same price as Typekit was before Adobe bought it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hda111 5y ago
So I need to develop a view counter for my static website? Not sure how to do that. Why do I need to pay for search engines crawling my website?
- da_chicken 5y ago
  I think you link the webfont as an external resource on their site. I'm just speculating, however.
  - Wowfunhappy 5y ago
    This is exactly how it works. You can't host the fonts locally.
xwdv 5y ago
Shouldn’t bother using custom fonts on web pages anyway, use the standard web fonts and save custom fonts for print or graphic designs.
- dylan604 5y ago
  I'm sure you're a big hit at all of the design meetings! How dare the devs tell the marketing/graphics people what they can and cannot do. Becareful, or they'll shove GA/AMP down at you in response!
  - xwdv 5y ago
    Fonts adversely affect page load speeds for no good reason, most users don’t even notice or care about these custom fonts. It’s far better for the bottom line to have a fast page. So they can bitch all they want, but at the end of the day, code is king. So bend the knee.
    - 55555 5y ago
      > So they can bitch all they want, but at the end of the day, code is king. So bend the knee. lol what...
  - Seirdy 5y ago
    - External fonts are blocked by security-conscious users (including every Tor Browser user who remembers to set the browser security level correctly) for a reason: they're a major attack vector - External fonts are often purely cosmetic. Using what over time adds up to several megabytes of data for cosmetics is inconsiderate. - inb4 "just disable remote fonts if you hate them": doing so breaks many websites that use icon fonts. Expecting users to have to manually configure 50+ websites (yes I did this, I count 54 websites on my exception list) is just insane. - Many people need to use local fonts. Some dyslexic people actively choose a font that helps them read more easily. Asking someone to play the whack-a-mole game of "will disabling remote fonts break this site's icons or not" game on every site because of a disability just isn't right. Just use sans, serif, and monospace for content. Let the user agent decide what that looks like, not your company's branding.

alexwennerberg 5y ago

Typefaces should not be copyrightable. Print ones are not, it makes no sense that digital ones are.

croes 5y ago
Print fonts are copyrightable.
- flowerlad 5y ago
  In the United States, the shapes of typefaces are not eligible for copyright. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti...
  - da_chicken 5y ago
    Ah, so that's how knock-off fonts work. You can reproduce essentially the same output (the typeface) as long as the code that produces it is distinct (the font).
  - croes 5y ago
    But in France and Germany but not Austria despite the Vienna Agreement for the Protection of Type Faces and their International Deposit. http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/dfat/seldoc/1973/2203.html http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/dfat/seldoc/1973/2203.htm...
pkaye 5y ago
The digital one is considered as code. In some countries even the print one has copyright.
mdip 5y ago
> Fonts should not be copyrightable. Print fonts are not, it makes no sense that digital ones are. I agree with your first statement, except that I'm stuck re-wording it to "I wish fonts weren't copyrightable" because I can't find an argument/proper analogy that works. I don't know the details around copyright law, IANAL (surprise!) either, so I'm looking at this from an incredibly naive legal perspective -- that almost everything is copyrightable (in the United States) except for facts. Since copyright law predates digital fonts, you have to look at things they are most like to see what applies (and find a judge to agree, but that part seems to be the simple). Print fonts are not copyrightable. I'm not sure why they're not copyrightable -- were they explicitly excluded (i.e. there's a law on the books that says "Print fonts are not copyrightable"[0]) or were they found to be "like this other thing that is excluded, so they are excluded, too". Then, looking at what's similar about print fonts versus digital ones, there's not really a whole lot other than that they're "concepts" that represent letters in this context. One is chiseled out of some form of metal or strong material, is that size/shape permanently and though there's science/research behind it, for whatever reason, it didn't represent enough of a kind of work to warrant protection. A font has a lot in common on the surface, but underneath it's a program[1]. One could extend that to say "bitmap fonts are so similar to print fonts that they should be excluded" but one cannot say the same for TTF/others and I'd imagine. The bigger problem, though, is that exclusions to copyright are basically never made any longer. This used to be more common, but the entertainment industry's money/power continues to extend copyright in ways that benefit them to the exclusion of other industries -- particularly software -- the large players have a lot of money, so a law that was designed to equally protect invention/creation (really, patent law was by-and-large aimed at helping individual inventors protect their invention/give them a chance to capitalize it against abusive larger competition) ends up helping secure the existing players positions. Now, I don't know if anyone wants Warner Brothers to make Mickey Mouse cartoons, but I suspect there's a less heavy-handed approach to protecting long-held IP while not extending copyright, basically, indefinitely for everything. So yeah, all of that to say "No, I don't think fonts should be copyrightable, either ... but I can say that for so many things and there's so much wrong with Copyright these days that it warrants revisiting a reset/rethink." Maybe one day! [0] It won't be that sentence, it'll be a page worth of explaining why it doesn't fall into the various defined kinds of works. [1] TTF hinting is turing complete.
mikedc 5y ago
In the US, "typefaces", ie. the shapes of the letters, generally are not. "Fonts", ie. the programs that draw the letters, are copyrighted as software, as something of a workaround. For more reading on the history here Typographica has a succinct overview[0]. [0] https://typographica.org/on-typography/copyright-protection-of-typefaces/ https://typographica.org/on-typography/copyright-protection-...
- tomrod 5y ago
  Point stands. These ought to not be royalty driven.
  - mikedc 5y ago
    I'm not sure I follow. Whether or not the typeface is eligible for copyright, the pricing model and terms of use are at the discretion of the font creator.
    - chipotle_coyote 5y ago
      "How a font is sold is up to the discretion of the font creator" and "a font should not be sold on a sliding cost scale" aren't mutually exclusive -- the latter's pretty clearly asserting an opinion about reasonable pricing models and terms of use. There are a lot of things people do that they're perfectly within their rights to do that someone else might strongly believe they shouldn't, right? Personally, I don't like the idea of selling fonts with costs governed by web page impressions, either, no matter how common it may be in the industry. I genuinely like having what I consider to be nice typefaces for my web sites, but this kind of licensing makes it incredibly impractical for me to use most commercial options.
      - mikedc 5y ago
        Of course, but the "point" in question is whether a typeface (or font) should be copyrightable.
- alberth 5y ago
dhosek 5y ago
That type designs are not protected is a gross injustice. The time and effort involved in creating a type design is significant. Alas, when the type industry had the resources to lobby to have copyright law changed, they were making a lot of money from stealing each others' designs and chose to lobby the opposite. There was an ill-fated effort in the 90s to lobby for typeface design protection (I was part of it as the editor of a typography magazine) but it never achieved any measurable success.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Igelau 5y ago
  It's not worth the hell that would ensue with people suing each other because their letters look too similar. Letters have to look similar -- that's the whole damn point!
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  That art styles are not protected is a gross injustice. The time and effort involved in creating an art style is significant. Alas, when the art industry had the resources to lobby to have copyright law changed… Type designs not being protected by copyright has benefits, too. Afaik, they're still protected by patent. (Not everything has to be copyright law! That's something the “intellectual property” lobby seems to be wilfully ignoring.)
  - dhosek 5y ago
    A design patent is available, but the bar for a design patent is very high and the income for most type designs is enough to maybe buy a nice dinner for two.¹ Copyright registration is easy and cheap.³ People who argue against type design copyright fall into at least one of three camps: (a) they have no idea what it takes to make a good typeface, (b) their ability to distinguish typefaces doesn't go much farther than distinguishing sans/serif/monospace (if even that), and/or (c) they hope to be able to use other people's designs for their own benefit. 1. Retail sales of typefaces is a ridiculously unprofitable business, which is part of why every nearly independent foundry/type reseller of measurable size is ending up under the umbrella of Monotype Imaging. The handful of designers who have made a living from type design either are employed as staff designers for Adobe/Microsoft/Monotype, do high-value custom designs for publishing clients (although these are becoming increasingly scarce as publishers who still do print are less willing to spend money on quality²) or, the big one but probably gone for good now, embedded fonts in printers (Arthur Baker's deal with HP, he claimed, left him set for life financially). 2. A big part of Font Bureau's early capital came from producing a custom version of Palatino for the gravure pages of Playboy that would match the printed output on the offset pages. There's probably a whole book to be written about the ways in which Hugh Hefner spent Playboy money in ways that nominally benefited the magazine but had a bigger impact in providing cash to artistic endeavors (most notably writers) that wouldn't otherwise see much money. 3. And optional. If registration occurs after an infringement, the copyright holder can only sue for actual damages. Pre-infringement registration also entitles the copyright holder to sue for punitive damages.
amelius 5y ago
From: https://glarts.org/font-and-typeface-legal-tip-sheet/ https://glarts.org/font-and-typeface-legal-tip-sheet/ > In the United States, fonts are protectable under copyright law. Typefaces, however, are not. ... A trademark protects what a typeface is called, a copyright protects how a font program is written, and a design patent protects letter design—how the letters appear. So if I understand this correctly, then unless they have a design patent for the entire range of typefaces, you could use some of the typefaces if you use a different encoding. Perhaps someone with legal background can comment.

m-p-3 5y ago

That's ridiculous..

stimpson_j_cat 5y ago

That's a standard practice for a lot of webfont vendors isn't it? I know it was for Typekit/Adobe Fonts (which requires a Creative Cloud subscription).

oefrha 5y ago
What even is Typekit’s pricing these days? I looked into it a few weeks ago and the only thing I could find was Typekit comes with any Creative Cloud subscription, including $10/mo ones. But surely you can’t pay $10/mo to serve an arbitrary amount from their webfont CDN? Did I miss something? Is the pricing only available after you subscribe?
- paulddraper 5y ago
  As far as I know, that is the deal.
- zippergz 5y ago
  I have Typekit via Creative Cloud, use web fonts on my site, and have not run into any additional fees or restrictions. That said, my site is pretty low-traffic, so it's possible there's some issue I'd run into if I used it more.
- lstamour 5y ago
  Since the 2018 rebranding to Adobe Fonts, there are no pageview or font limits for subscribers: https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/plan-limits.html https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/plan-limits.html Agency clients need their own subscription, legally: https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/font-licensing.html#web-client https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/font-licensing.html#web-...
- danrodney 5y ago
  There are no limits on pageviews https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/plan-limits.html https://helpx.adobe.com/fonts/using/plan-limits.html And it's actually cheaper... for $4.99/month you get an InCopy subscription which includes Adobe Fonts. That's the same price as Typekit was before Adobe bought it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

hda111 5y ago

So I need to develop a view counter for my static website? Not sure how to do that. Why do I need to pay for search engines crawling my website?

da_chicken 5y ago
I think you link the webfont as an external resource on their site. I'm just speculating, however.
- Wowfunhappy 5y ago
  This is exactly how it works. You can't host the fonts locally.

xwdv 5y ago

Shouldn’t bother using custom fonts on web pages anyway, use the standard web fonts and save custom fonts for print or graphic designs.

dylan604 5y ago
I'm sure you're a big hit at all of the design meetings! How dare the devs tell the marketing/graphics people what they can and cannot do. Becareful, or they'll shove GA/AMP down at you in response!
- xwdv 5y ago
  Fonts adversely affect page load speeds for no good reason, most users don’t even notice or care about these custom fonts. It’s far better for the bottom line to have a fast page. So they can bitch all they want, but at the end of the day, code is king. So bend the knee.
  - 55555 5y ago
    > So they can bitch all they want, but at the end of the day, code is king. So bend the knee. lol what...
- Seirdy 5y ago
  - External fonts are blocked by security-conscious users (including every Tor Browser user who remembers to set the browser security level correctly) for a reason: they're a major attack vector - External fonts are often purely cosmetic. Using what over time adds up to several megabytes of data for cosmetics is inconsiderate. - inb4 "just disable remote fonts if you hate them": doing so breaks many websites that use icon fonts. Expecting users to have to manually configure 50+ websites (yes I did this, I count 54 websites on my exception list) is just insane. - Many people need to use local fonts. Some dyslexic people actively choose a font that helps them read more easily. Asking someone to play the whack-a-mole game of "will disabling remote fonts break this site's icons or not" game on every site because of a disability just isn't right. Just use sans, serif, and monospace for content. Let the user agent decide what that looks like, not your company's branding.