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Reading this really helps illustrate why and how a font is considered a computer program and thus eligible for copyright protection. I don’t think most laypeopl

by xp84 3y ago

Reading this really helps illustrate why and how a font is considered a computer program and thus eligible for copyright protection. I don’t think most laypeople (and even many programmers) intuitively think of it that way because they seem like a collection of little pictures, but so much work goes into these fonts. We are fortunate to have so many good ones to choose from today, and that someone has footed the bill for their construction, since most people never directly license a font.

Apofis 3y ago
I totally skimmed that whole article wondering where the font was and only realized it when I finished. Pretty timeless!
p-e-w 3y ago
> Reading this really helps illustrate why and how a font is considered a computer program and thus eligible for copyright protection. Copyright protects all creative works, with very few exceptions. Whether or not a font is a computer program has absolutely nothing to do with whether it is eligible for copyright protection. Even if the font was just "a collection of little pictures" (that is, a bitmap font), it would still fall under copyright protection, unless the pictures were all in the public domain already, or some other special circumstances apply (e.g. creative threshold not met, created by the government, etc.).
- pgeorgi 3y ago
  Under US law, typefaces aren't copyrightable, and even in other copyright regimes, they only get a shorter protection duration. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti... for an overview. The digital workaround is to have bytecode in font files that is copyrightable.
  - p-e-w 3y ago
    Interesting, I didn't know that some countries don't give protection to typefaces. Does that mean that if you take a commercial font file and strip the bytecode, retaining only the glyph shapes, you can do as you wish with the result? And does that mean all bitmap fonts are actually public domain in the US?
    - adrian_b 3y ago
      Stripping the bytecode may make the font look ugly at low display resolutions, though many modern font rendering programs use various auto-hinting algorithms to alleviate that (which were invented in order to circumvent the patents that could forbid the execution of the bytecode).
      - xp84 3y ago
        I don’t know what bytecode really is in this context, but a plain old vector image is a program too, so i don’t know of any process which would (in US law) let you convert a font into something public-domain. (other than rasterizing text with it, at which point the output is not a “font” in the sense we usually mean when we use that term.)
    - xp84 3y ago
      Protecting a typeface itself would be super annoying. Every document you make, every billboard put up, every word on every sign, menu, signs on every vehicle on the road, would need to have its fonts explicitly licensed for those uses, the way webfonts are today. Complete with rules like “you can use our typeface on a sign, but if the sign is in a town over 10,000 population, we want $100, and if it’s a city over 1 million, we want $10,000. Oh, and all of this is per year.” Also, good luck even making a free font without being accused of making a “derivative work” of every copyright-encumbered font that’s come before. (“look at those serifs!”) I know I started the thread by saying I think fonts deserve copyright, and I do, but not the typefaces themselves, as that would drastically disrupt what you can create. It would be especially arbitrary considering most faces are derivative of what came before, stretching back centuries. To paraphrase a famous quote, “You didn’t build that, [Adobe]”
chrisco255 3y ago
Probably the majority of the software I use to write code is open source, but font authors will routinely ask for exorbitant amounts for a license, they often refuse to charge a flat fee, insisting that they get a higher cut if your app has a certain number of users. Just because an app is popular, doesn't mean it's raking in the dough to spend six figures on a font license. It's just bizarre that I can build an app that serves millions of users using tech stacks like Linux, HTML, JS, CSS, Rust, Go, with tens of thousands of open source libs and modules to choose from, none of which have per-user fees, the majority of which have no fees at all, of which millions of man-hours have gone into producing and maintaining, and a font could end up being the most expensive component of my app.
- jefftk 3y ago
  It's really not that weird: there are open source fonts and proprietary fonts, just as there is open source software and proprietary software.
  - chrisco255 3y ago
    And even proprietary software used in programming web servers rarely ever attempts to charge a "per user" fee or six figures for a mildly popular app to use.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  It's more comparable to illustration or photography, or even to a written body of html or js, than it is to the programming language. It's the output of an applied specialist technician for a specific purpose. So similar to those other things you can find a free or cheap generic off-the-shelf one that suits your use, open source fonts exist. Or you can pay for a specific one that suits it better. Font design is a domain several times older than the oldest reasonable precursor to computers. It's imo shitty to stomp in and demand it conform to our idea of how licensing should work.
  - chrisco255 3y ago
    > It's more comparable to illustration or photography, or even to a written body of html or js, than it is to the programming languag Yeah again I can download about a few hundred thousand open source tools like ffmpeg, git, Linux, Chromium, web servers, databases, queues, web libs, etc and almost always the best stuff is open source. Almost never is there some kind of per user fee just for copying code, and if it is, almost nobody is using it. It's not shitty for me to call out greedy excessive licensing practices.

by xp84 3y ago

Apofis 3y ago

I totally skimmed that whole article wondering where the font was and only realized it when I finished. Pretty timeless!

p-e-w 3y ago

> Reading this really helps illustrate why and how a font is considered a computer program and thus eligible for copyright protection. Copyright protects all creative works, with very few exceptions. Whether or not a font is a computer program has absolutely nothing to do with whether it is eligible for copyright protection. Even if the font was just "a collection of little pictures" (that is, a bitmap font), it would still fall under copyright protection, unless the pictures were all in the public domain already, or some other special circumstances apply (e.g. creative threshold not met, created by the government, etc.).

pgeorgi 3y ago
Under US law, typefaces aren't copyrightable, and even in other copyright regimes, they only get a shorter protection duration. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti... for an overview. The digital workaround is to have bytecode in font files that is copyrightable.
- p-e-w 3y ago
  Interesting, I didn't know that some countries don't give protection to typefaces. Does that mean that if you take a commercial font file and strip the bytecode, retaining only the glyph shapes, you can do as you wish with the result? And does that mean all bitmap fonts are actually public domain in the US?
  - adrian_b 3y ago
    Stripping the bytecode may make the font look ugly at low display resolutions, though many modern font rendering programs use various auto-hinting algorithms to alleviate that (which were invented in order to circumvent the patents that could forbid the execution of the bytecode).
    - xp84 3y ago
      I don’t know what bytecode really is in this context, but a plain old vector image is a program too, so i don’t know of any process which would (in US law) let you convert a font into something public-domain. (other than rasterizing text with it, at which point the output is not a “font” in the sense we usually mean when we use that term.)
  - xp84 3y ago
    Protecting a typeface itself would be super annoying. Every document you make, every billboard put up, every word on every sign, menu, signs on every vehicle on the road, would need to have its fonts explicitly licensed for those uses, the way webfonts are today. Complete with rules like “you can use our typeface on a sign, but if the sign is in a town over 10,000 population, we want $100, and if it’s a city over 1 million, we want $10,000. Oh, and all of this is per year.” Also, good luck even making a free font without being accused of making a “derivative work” of every copyright-encumbered font that’s come before. (“look at those serifs!”) I know I started the thread by saying I think fonts deserve copyright, and I do, but not the typefaces themselves, as that would drastically disrupt what you can create. It would be especially arbitrary considering most faces are derivative of what came before, stretching back centuries. To paraphrase a famous quote, “You didn’t build that, [Adobe]”

chrisco255 3y ago

Probably the majority of the software I use to write code is open source, but font authors will routinely ask for exorbitant amounts for a license, they often refuse to charge a flat fee, insisting that they get a higher cut if your app has a certain number of users. Just because an app is popular, doesn't mean it's raking in the dough to spend six figures on a font license. It's just bizarre that I can build an app that serves millions of users using tech stacks like Linux, HTML, JS, CSS, Rust, Go, with tens of thousands of open source libs and modules to choose from, none of which have per-user fees, the majority of which have no fees at all, of which millions of man-hours have gone into producing and maintaining, and a font could end up being the most expensive component of my app.

jefftk 3y ago
It's really not that weird: there are open source fonts and proprietary fonts, just as there is open source software and proprietary software.
- chrisco255 3y ago
  And even proprietary software used in programming web servers rarely ever attempts to charge a "per user" fee or six figures for a mildly popular app to use.
giraffe_lady 3y ago
It's more comparable to illustration or photography, or even to a written body of html or js, than it is to the programming language. It's the output of an applied specialist technician for a specific purpose. So similar to those other things you can find a free or cheap generic off-the-shelf one that suits your use, open source fonts exist. Or you can pay for a specific one that suits it better. Font design is a domain several times older than the oldest reasonable precursor to computers. It's imo shitty to stomp in and demand it conform to our idea of how licensing should work.
- chrisco255 3y ago
  > It's more comparable to illustration or photography, or even to a written body of html or js, than it is to the programming languag Yeah again I can download about a few hundred thousand open source tools like ffmpeg, git, Linux, Chromium, web servers, databases, queues, web libs, etc and almost always the best stuff is open source. Almost never is there some kind of per user fee just for copying code, and if it is, almost nobody is using it. It's not shitty for me to call out greedy excessive licensing practices.