8 ms·

You wouldn't steal a font

1401 points by todsacerdoti 2y ago

dporter 2y ago
I would, and I have.
- hyperbovine 2y ago
  It's fresh takes like this that keep me coming back to HN, year after year.
  - pixl97 2y ago
    I mean how many articles do we have a week where the AI vendors are copying the entire internet and using it for training. There is a significant portion of the internet that is perfectly fine with copying every bit of digital data and using it as their own.
- akho 2y ago
  Like, the actual lead type?
ks2048 2y ago
I was curious who was behind this campaign - it has a wikipedia page (answer: FACT and MPAA): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Wouldn%27t_Steal_a_Car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Wouldn%27t_Steal_a_Car
- socalgal2 2y ago
  A popular response https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4
azalemeth 2y ago
That is an absolutely brilliant turn of events – strong evidence that the font in an anti-piracy campaign was itself arguably a copyright-infringing knock-off. Someone should sue FACT for copyright infringement – and refuse to settle.
- charcircuit 2y ago
  You can't copyright a font.
  - datadrivenangel 2y ago
    They absolutely are copyrighted and big money.
    - EvanAnderson 2y ago
      In the US you can't copyright the shape of a font. You can copyright the programmatic description of a font. Design patents have been awarded for fonts. Trademark and trade dress protections could apply to the specific use of a font but not the font itself. The name of a font itself can be protected by trademark, as well. It's kind of a fascinating topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti... Edit: Back in the mid-90s versions of Corel Draw came with a Truetype editor. A friend of mine made "knock off" versions of fonts they liked from magazines, etc, and made them freely available on his ISP-provided web space. They drew them by hand, using printed samples as the inspiration. Over the years they got some angry messages from a few "type people" who didn't like that they'd made freely available knock-offs of various fonts. (I remember that "Keedy Sans" is one they knocked-off and got a particularly angry email about.) Further aside: My fiend made a sans serif typeface that has a distinct pattern of "erosion" at the edges and voids within the letters. It's easy to tell when it's the font he made. For the last 30 years I've kept samples of the various places I've seen it used, both on the Internet and on physical articles. I find it so amazing that a TTF file made by a kid in Corel Draw in 1994 or 1995 ended up being used in advertisements, on packaging, etc.
      - knuckleheadsmif 2y ago
        But you can Copyright the Name of a font. But yes long standing rule says you can copyright how letters & numbers look. Note that if you make a font that contains your own “artwork’ that does not represent a letter or number you can get protection for that. And only fairly recently (in the past 30 years—I forget when Adobe won this court case) the courts ruled you can protect the code for generating a fonts look from being copied.
sho_hn 2y ago
I know we don't really do humor on HN, but working in the car industry, this comedic Aussie rebuttal always amused me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb7N-JtQWGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb7N-JtQWGI
- ayhanfuat 2y ago
  It's also one of the funniest scenes of The IT Crowd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg
nobleach 2y ago
Having worked in the graphic design industry during the 90's, no. There's no way I'd have just slipped a font I didn't own on a disk and sent it off to a printer. When it comes to fonts for coding... sure there was that ONE time I snagged Operator Mono for an extended "trial". I still believe in paying for things that I use on a daily basis, so I switched back to Sauce Code Pro or something.
tiffanyh 2y ago
Can someone explain to me how you determine if a font is ripped/stolen? I was under the impression that fonts are just a collection of line arc/points. So is this a probabilistic comparison in that, if all of the line arc/points match another font - the chances are high it was ripped?
- lynndotpy 2y ago
  In this case, per the link: > went sleuthing and quickly found a PDF from the campaign site with the font embedded So, the PDF had the font Xband Rough embedded inside of it.
  - hiccuphippo 2y ago
    But was Xband created by copying the math from FF Confidential?
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  PDF is a famously (and hilariously) wild document format because it satisfied the need of being able to recreate a work piece faithfully using thousands of kinds of outputs, some of which didn't even exist when the document was created, to ideally arbitrary pixel resolution (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbCniw-BcW0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbCniw-BcW0 for a delightful and informative talk including this topic). As a result, in one of the modes of PDF you can save the entire font file for every font used by the PDF into the PDF itself, just in case it's not present on the recipient's machine. Costly? Sure! But what else are you going to do if your document uses a super-special font for displaying mathematical symbols or sanskrit or the glyphs of a language understood by fifty people on the planet and Unicode isn't widely adopted yet, having been invented just two years before PDF? So in this case, the author grabbed a copy of a PDF version of the ad (because those ads are still available online), cracked open the document itself, and found the glyphs for the letters are sourced from a version of the font that was intentionally created to steal someone else's font work because the whole font file is in the document.
  - Suppafly 2y ago
thih9 2y ago
I don’t think that’s productive. Best case response that I can imagine is piracy opponents pushing for some legislation mandating fonts with DRM. Air quotes - “it’s obviously the fault of the person who cloned the font and the general public needs to be protected against such content” - end air quotes. At the same time, it doesn’t have to be productive, it’s funny enough.
pelagic_sky 2y ago
Very early in my design education (late 90's) I was taught that fonts are fonts and the more you have, the better you tool set would be. As a graphic designer I definitely made things with fonts I had downloaded. It wasn't till I got my first serious design job at an agency where I quickly learned about purchasing and licensing fonts. Even if I could "find" a missing font, I wasn't allowed to use it. We needed to get the fonts directly from the vendor we were working with and if they were being too slow, we ate the cost and purchased the font.
- wildzzz 2y ago
  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.
  - phkahler 2y ago
    >> Either the service can detect you pulling a font for a domain that isn't paying for it... Is that really a thing? Markup in a web page tells how to display the text. Saying "use this font over here on this other server" seems fair game on some level. Might not be on another level, but it's technically the end user downloading a file that's publicly available on some server.
    - haneefmubarak 2y ago
      AIUI the font vendor has a list of customers, each of whom are required to provide an exact list of the domains they will host it on and the domains they will display it on. So the crawlers, upon identifying a matching font, simply have to check that both the displaying and hosting domains match.
    - hackingonempty 2y ago
      In the USA at least, contributory and vicarious infringement are a thing. Grokster knowingly directed their users to infringing material so they picked up secondary liability.
tossandthrow 2y ago
The moral background for copyright is in free fall these days. It is quickly turning into one of these things that there are laws for, and everyone thinks it is rediculous, it is never enforced and DE facto not a law. And what a shame that is.
- samspot 2y ago
  Copyright, and patents, are not based on moral principles. It's a temporary government license meant to encourage innovation and hustle. Whether it works or not, I don't know. But the only question of morality is if it's immoral to break an arbitrary law, or not.
  - themusicgod1 2y ago
    Copyright has always been based on moral principles. 'Moral rights' have been part of copyright longer than "encourage innovation and hustle" has been something the government has considered worth promoting. The original copyright laws were about controlling who could print the bible, and the statute of anne was about encouraging learning while controlling what booksellers could and couldn't do. Copyright if anything was about preventing innovation from the very beginning, and slowing the hustle of culture down so that incumbents could edge out newcomers - a drama that has played out generation after generation
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    This is strongly jurisdiction-dependent. US patent and copyright derive from A1S8C8 of the US constitution, "to promote science and useful arts". Much EU law derives from a French tradition based on droight d'auteur, or moral rights. International copyright code (Berne Convention) rips and mashes from both traditions.
    - int_19h 2y ago
      A law claiming that something is a "moral right" doesn't make it so, though. Just as e.g. sodomy laws claiming that something is immoral doesn't make it so.
jll29 2y ago
What saddens me is that a lot of people are so ignorant that they don't even realize a font is something that takes creativity, tradecraft and a lot of work/time/effort to design.
- phkahler 2y ago
  >> What saddens me is that a lot of people are so ignorant that they don't even realize a font is something that takes creativity, tradecraft and a lot of work/time/effort to design. I get that an average computer user who just views content might not. But as soon as you start creating stuff and even searching for and downloading a font you like I'd think some kind of mental bell would ring like "oh, these are a thing. Like some type of commodity."
  - RussianCow 2y ago
    The problem is that there are so many free fonts that most people take them for granted. And honestly, I don't blame most folks for thinking that way because there isn't a good reason for the average person to pay for a font. If you're just making wedding invites or signage for an event or some other one-off thing, you probably don't care. If you're a professional using them in your work, that's an entirely different story, and you are significantly more likely to appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into making them.
- cyberpunk 2y ago
  I remember trying to explain to some colleagues why I paid about 100 bucks for the font I use and why I wouldn’t share it with them and they just couldn’t get it. (It’s Berkeley mono). I don’t even know how many glyphs it is (it’s thousands) but for something I’m looking at for 6-8 hours a day, every single day and is the absolute peak of perfection (at least to me), 100 bucks seems like a fucking bargain to me. shrug I guess these folks never sold something they made completely by themselves maybe.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
crazygringo 2y ago
Edit: OK, the original post is extremely unclear. To clarify: the original font is named "FF Confidential" (which the post doesn't even mention). The seemingly illegal clone is called "XBAND Rough".
- micromacrofoot 2y ago
  copying the visual is legal, copying the file is not — in this case it seems the clone is of the file AND therefore the appearance
williamguerra 2y ago
here is a font stealing search query if anyone is interested. I used to have it as a custom search engine on chrome: URL with %s in place of query: https://www.google.com/search?q=intitle%3A%22index.of%22+(ttf%7Cotf)+%s+-html+-php+-aps+-cf+-jsp https://www.google.com/search?q=intitle%3A%22index.of%22+(tt...
jchw 2y ago
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 the SEGA Genesis/MegaDrive and Super Nintendo/Super Famicom.) Seems silly, however there is at least one source that seems to corroborate this idea, crediting the font to Catapult Entertainment, the company behind the XBAND: https://fontz.ch/browse/designer/catapultentertainmen https://fontz.ch/browse/designer/catapultentertainmen Of course, this could've just been someone else guessing; I can't really find any solid sources for the origin of this font.
- ndiddy 2y ago
  It is related. The font file contains the text "Copyright 1996 Catapult Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved". I'm not sure where it comes from because the SNES/Genesis/Saturn versions of the service didn't use it. Maybe it comes from the short-lived PC XBAND service?
  - jchw 2y ago
    > It is related. The font file contains the text "Copyright 1996 Catapult Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved". Wow! I should've thought to check that. > I'm not sure where it comes from because the SNES/Genesis/Saturn versions of the service didn't use it. Maybe it comes from the short-lived PC XBAND service? My guess was going to be that it was used in marketing copy, but that doesn't explain how it wound up distributed apparently freely. The idea that it is related to the PC XBAND service seems likely to me, though. The dates line up, based on this press release: http://www.gamezero.com/team-0/whats_new/past/xband-pc.html http://www.gamezero.com/team-0/whats_new/past/xband-pc.html
- speerer 2y ago
  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/III/crossheading/typefaces https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/part/I/chapter/...
phony-account 2y ago
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 will cost you 50 times more - for a single year. I guess these font sellers imagine there’s still some app boom - a Klondike rush with developers bathing in dollars. Maybe if their licenses were more realistic, piracy would be less of a problem.
- floriankarsten 2y ago
  [dead]
- giordanol 2y ago
  font licensing feels like it never caught up with how software actually gets made now. charging more for app use than for mass print always seemed backwards, especially when indie devs are scraping by and a font costs more than your backend. no wonder people end up using “free alternatives” without looking too hard at where they came from.
  - nickff 2y ago
    I am of the opinion that the licenses for fonts in software are too expensive, but why is the pricing ‘backwards’? Book publishers don’t make a lot of profit, while software developers do.
    - worik 2y ago
      > while software developers do. Ouch! What is wrong with me then?
    - teruakohatu 2y ago
      > Book publishers don’t make a lot of profit, while software developers do. Do you have a citation for that? Printing a book costs just about nothing, it’s astonishingly cheap to print a quality book in volume. Author royalties are not that high (I suppose famous authors whose name alone sell books is another story), then you have retail margins and overhead. The top three book publishers’ have sales in the low billions with operating margins in the 10 - 20% range. It is a healthy industry even if it is smaller than it used to be. The one problem with books is that shipping an individual book to a single consumer costs a far more than printing the book, but there is zero shipping and zero printing costs for ebooks, just the retailer margin.
mrkeen 2y ago
They stole the music too. Anti-pirating ad music stolen [2013]: https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/01/29/3678851.htm https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/01/29/3678851.h...
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  If one didn't know better, one could conclude the history of this ad campaign suggests it was performance art done by creatives ideologically opposed to the client.
  - alabastervlog 2y ago
    I'm sure these artist-loving folks just paid the very cheapest ad/video agency they could find to make this that seemed capable of completing the project, and that agency was the kind of place that does sloppy stuff like that (many do, haha).
albedoa 2y ago
I am not registered with this private instance, but there is a comment that I want to reply to: > This is so typical of people who are just doing a hatchet job for money but have no personal interest in the topic or skin in the game. This is both true and incomplete. Advocates against piracy are time and again caught infringing on IP. I think about when Lily Allen stole the content of her anti-piracy screed "It's Not Alright" from Techdirt[0]: > However, [...] the rest of the blog post – put there by Lilly herself – is someone else’s work. Arrr mateys, Long John Allen lifted the entire post from another site – Techdirt.com – effectively pirating the work of the one and only Mike Masnick. > “I think it’s wonderful that Lilly Allen found so much value in our Techdirt post that she decided to copy — or should I say ‘pirate’? — the entire post,” Mike told TorrentFreak on hearing the shocking news. The anti-piracy creators demand that we stay within their narrow definition of "piracy", which just so happens to exclude the work that they steal. Yes, the creative agency behind the "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" ad are disconnected from the cause. And their clients at the MPAA and FACT do not consider fonts to be worthy of the protections that are ostensibly the basis of their existence. 0: https://torrentfreak.com/file-sharing-heroine-lilly-allen-is-a-copyright-hypocrite-090921/ https://torrentfreak.com/file-sharing-heroine-lilly-allen-is...
breck 2y ago
[dead]
cosmotic 2y ago
Looks like the wikipedia page needs a bit of updating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Wouldn%27t_Steal_a_Car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Wouldn%27t_Steal_a_Car
locallost 2y ago
Off-topic, but with this ad I always think of the IT Crowd spoof https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  Relevant: You wouldn't download a car >https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/piracy-its-a-crime https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/piracy-its-a-crime Also be aware that some people actually consider the real PSA to be a Mandela effect since they consider "You wouldn't download a car" to be the "real, original" text of these PSAs, while in reality this was a popular parody/meme that was made out of the PSA: > https://www.reddit.com/r/MandelaEffect/comments/113qibd/you_wouldnt_download_a_car/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MandelaEffect/comments/113qibd/you_...
rglover 2y ago
I would happily pay for any font if I could get individual weights for say $5-$10 and entire families for $20-100 with any usage I want (print, web, etc). I feel like font foundries would print money this way. But for most projects, $300+ for a nice family (that can only be used in a hyper-specific context) is just insane when many free or cheaper alternatives exist. Used to waste time and money with foundry stuff until Google Fonts caught up. Now I typically source something from there unless it's essential to the design.
- tallytarik 2y ago
  I suspect they are printing more money with the 1-10 megacorps who can afford to pay millions of dollars for per-eyeballs licenses.
- scripturial 2y ago
  I suspect it is probably right that they would find it more profitable to sell 100 copies for $10 than 1 copy for $1000. But I do wonder, it could be that the occasional $10,000 sale to a large company pays more in the long run for less hassle. It’s hard to know. Do any creative agencies release their sales information? I’d say there should at least be a small niece for a company to profit off the back of less expensive more reasonably licensed font sales. I don’t know how many lawyers a small company would need to do this though. Would they be sued by Adobe (either for fonts that look similar, or with pointless lawsuits just to wear them out?)
  - asimpletune 2y ago
    Part of the value may be in how exclusive the font seems. So in that view 1 sale of $1000 is more valuable because it’s more exclusive. Basically, one potential attribute of fonts is they’re a luxury not a commodity.
anonym29 2y ago
"Entity that conducts IP theft whines about IP theft"... just like OpenAI whining about Deepseek distillation... Remember kids: information wants to be free!
nla 2y ago
Bought the Adobe Font Folio -- TWICE. Now, every single font in the font folio is free with a $30./month Adobe sub.
- nativeit 2y ago
  > ...every single font in the font folio is free with a $30./month Adobe sub. That's an interesting definition of "free," but it's relevant that the subscription doesn't grant a perpetual license.
nativeit 2y ago
This comment section is precisely what I expected upon discovering this very funny anecdote regarding the irony and hypocrisy involved with the infamous anti-piracy advocacy of the late '90's/early '00s. Peak HN--didactic, humorless, and lost in its own takes about the absolute least relevant detail of the story: font licensing. This sounds very critical, but I assure you, these are my people. I rather find it very reassuring, even a little charming. Don't ever change HN.
- gred 2y ago
  I'm also enjoying the conversation, but IMO font licensing is core to whether or not there is actual irony and hypocrisy at play (specifically the copyright aspect, and whether or not the font clone actually infringed copyright).
JohnnyLarue 2y ago
But... fonts aren't copyrightable. Was this a patented font?
Animats 2y ago
What happens if you present an image of a page in some font to an LLM, and ask it to make you a font file for that font? An LLM could probably not only do that, but create matching characters for ones not already present. Oh, and tell it to fix the kerning.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  As a matter of US law: - Font letterforms are not copyrightable. (Eltra Corp. v. Ringer, 579 F.2d 294 (4th Cir. 1978) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eltra_Corp._v._Ringer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eltra_Corp._v._Ringer>) - Font programmes are. (Generally 1980 Computer Software Copyright Act.) - Cleanroom reimplementation of software is not copyright infringement. An AI without access to original source code would likely pass this test. - As a further twist, it appears likely that courts will hold that AI creations are themselves not copyrightable (original works of authorship), such that the product of any such project would itself be public domain. (See: <https://www.reuters.com/legal/ai-generated-art-cannot-receive-copyrights-us-court-says-2023-08-21/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/ai-generated-art-cannot-receiv...>.) The whole scenario appears to open the door to liberation of all fonts for which public letterforms are available. This would be an "AI hole" (analogous to the ... analogue hole) for escaping copyright. Whether this liberation would occur before foundries passed new protective legislation will be an interesting question.
  - Animats 2y ago
    Right. A good question to work on is whether an LLM, given a reasonable number of characters of a font, can generate letter forms for the entire Unicode character space. Probably. It's a style matching problem, and LLMs are good at that.
    - dredmorbius 2y ago
      That would be interesting to see. An a possible way of extending current typefaces through the Unicode glyph-space. Thought I'd had earlier: there's a lot of detail that goes into font design, particularly anticipating issues with specific media. E.g., faces meant for wet-ink print often incorporates features to avoid pooling or smearing ink ("ink traps", see: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_trap>). Electrostatic printing (a/k/a laserprinters), and screen-based displays (CRT, LED, Plasma, eInk) also have idiosyncrasies which fine-detail font design may take into account. I'm not sure those would be hugely significant, but seem a domain in which a naive AI font designer might prove deficient.
wonderwonder 2y ago
Wife works in corp. legal. Just had to settle a demand for font licenses that the company front end used without approval. $40k. Its a good gimmick if you can get it.
socalgal2 2y ago
TIL: font designs are not copyrightable in the USA. Font files are but the design itself is not. It seems you are free to copy the design, but not the file. Not sure how that plays out in practice. Is it common to copy a font design or is it just more common to be inspired by a font design but make a new font that's in the same general design space? Like say Arial seems inspired by Helvetica but is not the same.
- williamscales 2y ago
  There are definitely fonts that are nearly identical copies, e.g. Palladio is a clone of Palatino (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatino#Free_and_open-source_versions_and_derivatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatino#Free_and_open-source_...)
  - porker 2y ago
    Looking forward to someone doing the same for Gill Sans and most of the Monotype catalog now that they've switched to annual licensing for webfonts (pay once use forever is gone)
    - internetter 2y ago
      Also the creator of Gill Sans—Eric Gill—sexually abused his children and dog. Licensing aside I wouldn’t touch this font with a 12 foot pole
dismalaf 2y ago
fonts.google.com has 1816 different font families that are all open-source. So no, I wouldn't steal a font when there's so many available for free.
- devnullbrain 2y ago
  There are many movies available for free
  - hiccuphippo 2y ago
    Some of them even use those free fonts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVhlJNJopOQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVhlJNJopOQ
gorfian_robot 2y ago
I definitely would
TheRealPomax 2y ago
There was a nice video on how you can't copyright a typeface recently by "Ok, so" over on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J06tluN7rtE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J06tluN7rtE But you can copyright a font name, so if someone copies your work and releases it under a new name... that's that's like creating a copy of the car piece by piece and giving it your own name. So they were right: we not downloading a car, we never were. We were all just making copies.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
twobitshifter 2y ago
Typefaces are not copyrightable but fonts are off, using a font with a knockoff typeface is not copyright infringement because it is not using the copyrighted font.
r721 2y ago
>Powered by Iceshrimp Sort of off-topic, but interesting engine, which I never heard about (wasn't ever mentioned on HN either: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Iceshrimp https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Iceshrimp): >Iceshrimp is a decentralized and federated social networking service, implementing the ActivityPub standard. https://iceshrimp.dev/iceshrimp/iceshrimp.net https://iceshrimp.dev/iceshrimp/iceshrimp.net
- rossy 2y ago
  Iceshrimp, or at least this JavaScript version of it, is a fork of Misskey, which has been mentioned on HN a few times. If you've heard of Mastodon, Misskey and its forks participate in the same decentralized social network - Mastodon users can like and comment on the tweet-like posts that a Misskey user makes and vice-versa. The Iceshrimp devs are also working on a "port" to .NET that's basically a brand new social media app, but with an upgrade path from the JavaScript version. I also use Iceshrimp to self-host my own fediverse account and I think it's pretty good software. I think it has a better UI that Mastodon and it has some cutesy features that Mastodon lacks, like being able to emoji-react to posts.
curtisszmania 2y ago
[dead]
efitz 2y ago
I spent some time last weekend playing with LLMs and SVGs- it turns out SVG is a domain specific language and LLMs know how to use it. I was able to get an LLM (grok from X.ai) to author SVGs from a description of what I wanted it to look like, and to modify existing SVG text to customize files that weren’t perfectly to my liking. Fonts are also written in domain specific languages, I need to experiment with whether LLMs can author or modify fonts. I do not think that the ridiculous terms that font and clip art and stock photo companies now offer, is going to be a viable business model in a couple of years. We will all be able to use (for example) “LLM Helvetica Free” without any license.
- gjohnhazel 2y ago
  You inspired me to attempt this and sadly GPT, Claude, and Gemini all said they didn’t have the software tools to do it. But as you mentioned, it can generate SVGs and those can be used to create a font.
mchusma 2y ago
Copyright for most (if not all) fonts seems like something that just shouldn’t work. We want things in the public domain, like Shakespeare, and we want derivative works protected. Fonts are tiny differences on public domain work that 90% of people can’t tell. You wouldn’t want Disney to claim every pencil stroke difference on Mikey’s to be subject to different copyright terms, it would become a kind of perpetual copyright strategy. If there are true technical improvements to the way we represent letters, they should be covered by patents, with their shorter terms.
- lobsterthief 2y ago
  How do you encourage people to continue making new typefaces if anyone could use them immediately? FWIW, it does take significant time to design individual typefaces. It’s not just a set of characters: it’s the character in lowercase and uppercase, how letters appear differently when adjacent to certain other letters, punctuation, etc. A significant amount of time goes into the process.
rustcleaner 2y ago
If you've seen a bunch of memes on 4chan and 8chan with TEFF Renard, Trinite, and/or Lexicon fonts, that was me.
alpemre 2y ago
An AI font generatooorrrr!! (whoop whoop horn sound effect:)
- amai 2y ago
  https://www.calligrapher.ai/ https://www.calligrapher.ai/
GenshoTikamura 2y ago
What about stealing code from github, images from deviantart and pinterest, knowledge base from stackoverflow, etc, to train AI?
jokethrowaway 2y ago
The concept of "piracy" and copyright is completely ridiculous. Real piracy involves stealing, destroying and killing, not copying numbers. I never entered in a contract with you, producer of goods or innovation, you have no right to forbid me from copying anything. You may prevent your own customers from facilitating access of non paying customers to their goods (by making them sign a contract) and even persecute them in a civil court (for breach of contract). The fact that governments allow copyright owners to censor information on the internet to protect their commercial interest is just absolutely insane and incredibly damaging to the freedom of circulation of culture and ideas.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ummonk 2y ago
It’s clearly not the same font (you can see visible differences between the letters), and therefore not pirated. The appearance of a typeface can’t be copyrighted in the US - only the digital instructions used to render them (e.g. if someone visually inspects a font and clones it that is perfectly alright, as long as they don’t directly copy from and adapt the underlying font file).
akagusu 2y ago
They can steal you, but you can’t steal them; that’s the rule

1401 points by todsacerdoti 2y ago

dporter 2y ago

I would, and I have.

hyperbovine 2y ago
It's fresh takes like this that keep me coming back to HN, year after year.
- pixl97 2y ago
  I mean how many articles do we have a week where the AI vendors are copying the entire internet and using it for training. There is a significant portion of the internet that is perfectly fine with copying every bit of digital data and using it as their own.
akho 2y ago
Like, the actual lead type?

ks2048 2y ago

I was curious who was behind this campaign - it has a wikipedia page (answer: FACT and MPAA): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Wouldn%27t_Steal_a_Car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Wouldn%27t_Steal_a_Car

socalgal2 2y ago
A popular response https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4

azalemeth 2y ago

That is an absolutely brilliant turn of events – strong evidence that the font in an anti-piracy campaign was itself arguably a copyright-infringing knock-off. Someone should sue FACT for copyright infringement – and refuse to settle.

charcircuit 2y ago
You can't copyright a font.
- datadrivenangel 2y ago
  They absolutely are copyrighted and big money.
  - EvanAnderson 2y ago
    In the US you can't copyright the shape of a font. You can copyright the programmatic description of a font. Design patents have been awarded for fonts. Trademark and trade dress protections could apply to the specific use of a font but not the font itself. The name of a font itself can be protected by trademark, as well. It's kind of a fascinating topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti... Edit: Back in the mid-90s versions of Corel Draw came with a Truetype editor. A friend of mine made "knock off" versions of fonts they liked from magazines, etc, and made them freely available on his ISP-provided web space. They drew them by hand, using printed samples as the inspiration. Over the years they got some angry messages from a few "type people" who didn't like that they'd made freely available knock-offs of various fonts. (I remember that "Keedy Sans" is one they knocked-off and got a particularly angry email about.) Further aside: My fiend made a sans serif typeface that has a distinct pattern of "erosion" at the edges and voids within the letters. It's easy to tell when it's the font he made. For the last 30 years I've kept samples of the various places I've seen it used, both on the Internet and on physical articles. I find it so amazing that a TTF file made by a kid in Corel Draw in 1994 or 1995 ended up being used in advertisements, on packaging, etc.
    - knuckleheadsmif 2y ago
      But you can Copyright the Name of a font. But yes long standing rule says you can copyright how letters & numbers look. Note that if you make a font that contains your own “artwork’ that does not represent a letter or number you can get protection for that. And only fairly recently (in the past 30 years—I forget when Adobe won this court case) the courts ruled you can protect the code for generating a fonts look from being copied.

sho_hn 2y ago

I know we don't really do humor on HN, but working in the car industry, this comedic Aussie rebuttal always amused me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb7N-JtQWGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fb7N-JtQWGI

ayhanfuat 2y ago
It's also one of the funniest scenes of The IT Crowd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg

nobleach 2y ago

Having worked in the graphic design industry during the 90's, no. There's no way I'd have just slipped a font I didn't own on a disk and sent it off to a printer. When it comes to fonts for coding... sure there was that ONE time I snagged Operator Mono for an extended "trial". I still believe in paying for things that I use on a daily basis, so I switched back to Sauce Code Pro or something.

tiffanyh 2y ago

Can someone explain to me how you determine if a font is ripped/stolen? I was under the impression that fonts are just a collection of line arc/points. So is this a probabilistic comparison in that, if all of the line arc/points match another font - the chances are high it was ripped?

lynndotpy 2y ago
In this case, per the link: > went sleuthing and quickly found a PDF from the campaign site with the font embedded So, the PDF had the font Xband Rough embedded inside of it.
- hiccuphippo 2y ago
  But was Xband created by copying the math from FF Confidential?
shadowgovt 2y ago
PDF is a famously (and hilariously) wild document format because it satisfied the need of being able to recreate a work piece faithfully using thousands of kinds of outputs, some of which didn't even exist when the document was created, to ideally arbitrary pixel resolution (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbCniw-BcW0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbCniw-BcW0 for a delightful and informative talk including this topic). As a result, in one of the modes of PDF you can save the entire font file for every font used by the PDF into the PDF itself, just in case it's not present on the recipient's machine. Costly? Sure! But what else are you going to do if your document uses a super-special font for displaying mathematical symbols or sanskrit or the glyphs of a language understood by fifty people on the planet and Unicode isn't widely adopted yet, having been invented just two years before PDF? So in this case, the author grabbed a copy of a PDF version of the ad (because those ads are still available online), cracked open the document itself, and found the glyphs for the letters are sourced from a version of the font that was intentionally created to steal someone else's font work because the whole font file is in the document.
- Suppafly 2y ago

thih9 2y ago

I don’t think that’s productive. Best case response that I can imagine is piracy opponents pushing for some legislation mandating fonts with DRM. Air quotes - “it’s obviously the fault of the person who cloned the font and the general public needs to be protected against such content” - end air quotes. At the same time, it doesn’t have to be productive, it’s funny enough.

pelagic_sky 2y ago

Very early in my design education (late 90's) I was taught that fonts are fonts and the more you have, the better you tool set would be. As a graphic designer I definitely made things with fonts I had downloaded. It wasn't till I got my first serious design job at an agency where I quickly learned about purchasing and licensing fonts. Even if I could "find" a missing font, I wasn't allowed to use it. We needed to get the fonts directly from the vendor we were working with and if they were being too slow, we ate the cost and purchased the font.

wildzzz 2y ago
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.
- phkahler 2y ago
  >> Either the service can detect you pulling a font for a domain that isn't paying for it... Is that really a thing? Markup in a web page tells how to display the text. Saying "use this font over here on this other server" seems fair game on some level. Might not be on another level, but it's technically the end user downloading a file that's publicly available on some server.
  - haneefmubarak 2y ago
    AIUI the font vendor has a list of customers, each of whom are required to provide an exact list of the domains they will host it on and the domains they will display it on. So the crawlers, upon identifying a matching font, simply have to check that both the displaying and hosting domains match.
  - hackingonempty 2y ago
    In the USA at least, contributory and vicarious infringement are a thing. Grokster knowingly directed their users to infringing material so they picked up secondary liability.

tossandthrow 2y ago

The moral background for copyright is in free fall these days. It is quickly turning into one of these things that there are laws for, and everyone thinks it is rediculous, it is never enforced and DE facto not a law. And what a shame that is.

samspot 2y ago
Copyright, and patents, are not based on moral principles. It's a temporary government license meant to encourage innovation and hustle. Whether it works or not, I don't know. But the only question of morality is if it's immoral to break an arbitrary law, or not.
- themusicgod1 2y ago
  Copyright has always been based on moral principles. 'Moral rights' have been part of copyright longer than "encourage innovation and hustle" has been something the government has considered worth promoting. The original copyright laws were about controlling who could print the bible, and the statute of anne was about encouraging learning while controlling what booksellers could and couldn't do. Copyright if anything was about preventing innovation from the very beginning, and slowing the hustle of culture down so that incumbents could edge out newcomers - a drama that has played out generation after generation
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  This is strongly jurisdiction-dependent. US patent and copyright derive from A1S8C8 of the US constitution, "to promote science and useful arts". Much EU law derives from a French tradition based on droight d'auteur, or moral rights. International copyright code (Berne Convention) rips and mashes from both traditions.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    A law claiming that something is a "moral right" doesn't make it so, though. Just as e.g. sodomy laws claiming that something is immoral doesn't make it so.

jll29 2y ago

What saddens me is that a lot of people are so ignorant that they don't even realize a font is something that takes creativity, tradecraft and a lot of work/time/effort to design.

phkahler 2y ago
>> What saddens me is that a lot of people are so ignorant that they don't even realize a font is something that takes creativity, tradecraft and a lot of work/time/effort to design. I get that an average computer user who just views content might not. But as soon as you start creating stuff and even searching for and downloading a font you like I'd think some kind of mental bell would ring like "oh, these are a thing. Like some type of commodity."
- RussianCow 2y ago
  The problem is that there are so many free fonts that most people take them for granted. And honestly, I don't blame most folks for thinking that way because there isn't a good reason for the average person to pay for a font. If you're just making wedding invites or signage for an event or some other one-off thing, you probably don't care. If you're a professional using them in your work, that's an entirely different story, and you are significantly more likely to appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into making them.
cyberpunk 2y ago
I remember trying to explain to some colleagues why I paid about 100 bucks for the font I use and why I wouldn’t share it with them and they just couldn’t get it. (It’s Berkeley mono). I don’t even know how many glyphs it is (it’s thousands) but for something I’m looking at for 6-8 hours a day, every single day and is the absolute peak of perfection (at least to me), 100 bucks seems like a fucking bargain to me. shrug I guess these folks never sold something they made completely by themselves maybe.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

crazygringo 2y ago

Edit: OK, the original post is extremely unclear. To clarify: the original font is named "FF Confidential" (which the post doesn't even mention). The seemingly illegal clone is called "XBAND Rough".

micromacrofoot 2y ago
copying the visual is legal, copying the file is not — in this case it seems the clone is of the file AND therefore the appearance

williamguerra 2y ago

here is a font stealing search query if anyone is interested. I used to have it as a custom search engine on chrome: URL with %s in place of query: https://www.google.com/search?q=intitle%3A%22index.of%22+(ttf%7Cotf)+%s+-html+-php+-aps+-cf+-jsp https://www.google.com/search?q=intitle%3A%22index.of%22+(tt...

jchw 2y ago

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 the SEGA Genesis/MegaDrive and Super Nintendo/Super Famicom.) Seems silly, however there is at least one source that seems to corroborate this idea, crediting the font to Catapult Entertainment, the company behind the XBAND: https://fontz.ch/browse/designer/catapultentertainmen https://fontz.ch/browse/designer/catapultentertainmen Of course, this could've just been someone else guessing; I can't really find any solid sources for the origin of this font.

ndiddy 2y ago
It is related. The font file contains the text "Copyright 1996 Catapult Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved". I'm not sure where it comes from because the SNES/Genesis/Saturn versions of the service didn't use it. Maybe it comes from the short-lived PC XBAND service?
- jchw 2y ago
  > It is related. The font file contains the text "Copyright 1996 Catapult Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved". Wow! I should've thought to check that. > I'm not sure where it comes from because the SNES/Genesis/Saturn versions of the service didn't use it. Maybe it comes from the short-lived PC XBAND service? My guess was going to be that it was used in marketing copy, but that doesn't explain how it wound up distributed apparently freely. The idea that it is related to the PC XBAND service seems likely to me, though. The dates line up, based on this press release: http://www.gamezero.com/team-0/whats_new/past/xband-pc.html http://www.gamezero.com/team-0/whats_new/past/xband-pc.html
speerer 2y ago
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/III/crossheading/typefaces https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/part/I/chapter/...

phony-account 2y ago

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 will cost you 50 times more - for a single year. I guess these font sellers imagine there’s still some app boom - a Klondike rush with developers bathing in dollars. Maybe if their licenses were more realistic, piracy would be less of a problem.

floriankarsten 2y ago
[dead]
giordanol 2y ago
font licensing feels like it never caught up with how software actually gets made now. charging more for app use than for mass print always seemed backwards, especially when indie devs are scraping by and a font costs more than your backend. no wonder people end up using “free alternatives” without looking too hard at where they came from.
- nickff 2y ago
  I am of the opinion that the licenses for fonts in software are too expensive, but why is the pricing ‘backwards’? Book publishers don’t make a lot of profit, while software developers do.
  - worik 2y ago
    > while software developers do. Ouch! What is wrong with me then?
  - teruakohatu 2y ago
    > Book publishers don’t make a lot of profit, while software developers do. Do you have a citation for that? Printing a book costs just about nothing, it’s astonishingly cheap to print a quality book in volume. Author royalties are not that high (I suppose famous authors whose name alone sell books is another story), then you have retail margins and overhead. The top three book publishers’ have sales in the low billions with operating margins in the 10 - 20% range. It is a healthy industry even if it is smaller than it used to be. The one problem with books is that shipping an individual book to a single consumer costs a far more than printing the book, but there is zero shipping and zero printing costs for ebooks, just the retailer margin.

mrkeen 2y ago

They stole the music too. Anti-pirating ad music stolen [2013]: https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/01/29/3678851.htm https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/01/29/3678851.h...

shadowgovt 2y ago
If one didn't know better, one could conclude the history of this ad campaign suggests it was performance art done by creatives ideologically opposed to the client.
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  I'm sure these artist-loving folks just paid the very cheapest ad/video agency they could find to make this that seemed capable of completing the project, and that agency was the kind of place that does sloppy stuff like that (many do, haha).

albedoa 2y ago

I am not registered with this private instance, but there is a comment that I want to reply to: > This is so typical of people who are just doing a hatchet job for money but have no personal interest in the topic or skin in the game. This is both true and incomplete. Advocates against piracy are time and again caught infringing on IP. I think about when Lily Allen stole the content of her anti-piracy screed "It's Not Alright" from Techdirt[0]: > However, [...] the rest of the blog post – put there by Lilly herself – is someone else’s work. Arrr mateys, Long John Allen lifted the entire post from another site – Techdirt.com – effectively pirating the work of the one and only Mike Masnick. > “I think it’s wonderful that Lilly Allen found so much value in our Techdirt post that she decided to copy — or should I say ‘pirate’? — the entire post,” Mike told TorrentFreak on hearing the shocking news. The anti-piracy creators demand that we stay within their narrow definition of "piracy", which just so happens to exclude the work that they steal. Yes, the creative agency behind the "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" ad are disconnected from the cause. And their clients at the MPAA and FACT do not consider fonts to be worthy of the protections that are ostensibly the basis of their existence. 0: https://torrentfreak.com/file-sharing-heroine-lilly-allen-is-a-copyright-hypocrite-090921/ https://torrentfreak.com/file-sharing-heroine-lilly-allen-is...

breck 2y ago

[dead]

cosmotic 2y ago

Looks like the wikipedia page needs a bit of updating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Wouldn%27t_Steal_a_Car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Wouldn%27t_Steal_a_Car

locallost 2y ago

Off-topic, but with this ad I always think of the IT Crowd spoof https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg

aleph_minus_one 2y ago
Relevant: You wouldn't download a car >https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/piracy-its-a-crime https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/piracy-its-a-crime Also be aware that some people actually consider the real PSA to be a Mandela effect since they consider "You wouldn't download a car" to be the "real, original" text of these PSAs, while in reality this was a popular parody/meme that was made out of the PSA: > https://www.reddit.com/r/MandelaEffect/comments/113qibd/you_wouldnt_download_a_car/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MandelaEffect/comments/113qibd/you_...

rglover 2y ago

I would happily pay for any font if I could get individual weights for say $5-$10 and entire families for $20-100 with any usage I want (print, web, etc). I feel like font foundries would print money this way. But for most projects, $300+ for a nice family (that can only be used in a hyper-specific context) is just insane when many free or cheaper alternatives exist. Used to waste time and money with foundry stuff until Google Fonts caught up. Now I typically source something from there unless it's essential to the design.

tallytarik 2y ago
I suspect they are printing more money with the 1-10 megacorps who can afford to pay millions of dollars for per-eyeballs licenses.
scripturial 2y ago
I suspect it is probably right that they would find it more profitable to sell 100 copies for $10 than 1 copy for $1000. But I do wonder, it could be that the occasional $10,000 sale to a large company pays more in the long run for less hassle. It’s hard to know. Do any creative agencies release their sales information? I’d say there should at least be a small niece for a company to profit off the back of less expensive more reasonably licensed font sales. I don’t know how many lawyers a small company would need to do this though. Would they be sued by Adobe (either for fonts that look similar, or with pointless lawsuits just to wear them out?)
- asimpletune 2y ago
  Part of the value may be in how exclusive the font seems. So in that view 1 sale of $1000 is more valuable because it’s more exclusive. Basically, one potential attribute of fonts is they’re a luxury not a commodity.

anonym29 2y ago

"Entity that conducts IP theft whines about IP theft"... just like OpenAI whining about Deepseek distillation... Remember kids: information wants to be free!

nla 2y ago

Bought the Adobe Font Folio -- TWICE. Now, every single font in the font folio is free with a $30./month Adobe sub.

nativeit 2y ago
> ...every single font in the font folio is free with a $30./month Adobe sub. That's an interesting definition of "free," but it's relevant that the subscription doesn't grant a perpetual license.

nativeit 2y ago

This comment section is precisely what I expected upon discovering this very funny anecdote regarding the irony and hypocrisy involved with the infamous anti-piracy advocacy of the late '90's/early '00s. Peak HN--didactic, humorless, and lost in its own takes about the absolute least relevant detail of the story: font licensing. This sounds very critical, but I assure you, these are my people. I rather find it very reassuring, even a little charming. Don't ever change HN.

gred 2y ago
I'm also enjoying the conversation, but IMO font licensing is core to whether or not there is actual irony and hypocrisy at play (specifically the copyright aspect, and whether or not the font clone actually infringed copyright).

JohnnyLarue 2y ago

But... fonts aren't copyrightable. Was this a patented font?

Animats 2y ago

What happens if you present an image of a page in some font to an LLM, and ask it to make you a font file for that font? An LLM could probably not only do that, but create matching characters for ones not already present. Oh, and tell it to fix the kerning.

dredmorbius 2y ago
As a matter of US law: - Font letterforms are not copyrightable. (Eltra Corp. v. Ringer, 579 F.2d 294 (4th Cir. 1978) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eltra_Corp._v._Ringer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eltra_Corp._v._Ringer>) - Font programmes are. (Generally 1980 Computer Software Copyright Act.) - Cleanroom reimplementation of software is not copyright infringement. An AI without access to original source code would likely pass this test. - As a further twist, it appears likely that courts will hold that AI creations are themselves not copyrightable (original works of authorship), such that the product of any such project would itself be public domain. (See: <https://www.reuters.com/legal/ai-generated-art-cannot-receive-copyrights-us-court-says-2023-08-21/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/ai-generated-art-cannot-receiv...>.) The whole scenario appears to open the door to liberation of all fonts for which public letterforms are available. This would be an "AI hole" (analogous to the ... analogue hole) for escaping copyright. Whether this liberation would occur before foundries passed new protective legislation will be an interesting question.
- Animats 2y ago
  Right. A good question to work on is whether an LLM, given a reasonable number of characters of a font, can generate letter forms for the entire Unicode character space. Probably. It's a style matching problem, and LLMs are good at that.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    That would be interesting to see. An a possible way of extending current typefaces through the Unicode glyph-space. Thought I'd had earlier: there's a lot of detail that goes into font design, particularly anticipating issues with specific media. E.g., faces meant for wet-ink print often incorporates features to avoid pooling or smearing ink ("ink traps", see: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_trap>). Electrostatic printing (a/k/a laserprinters), and screen-based displays (CRT, LED, Plasma, eInk) also have idiosyncrasies which fine-detail font design may take into account. I'm not sure those would be hugely significant, but seem a domain in which a naive AI font designer might prove deficient.

wonderwonder 2y ago

Wife works in corp. legal. Just had to settle a demand for font licenses that the company front end used without approval. $40k. Its a good gimmick if you can get it.

socalgal2 2y ago

TIL: font designs are not copyrightable in the USA. Font files are but the design itself is not. It seems you are free to copy the design, but not the file. Not sure how that plays out in practice. Is it common to copy a font design or is it just more common to be inspired by a font design but make a new font that's in the same general design space? Like say Arial seems inspired by Helvetica but is not the same.

williamscales 2y ago
There are definitely fonts that are nearly identical copies, e.g. Palladio is a clone of Palatino (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatino#Free_and_open-source_versions_and_derivatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatino#Free_and_open-source_...)
- porker 2y ago
  Looking forward to someone doing the same for Gill Sans and most of the Monotype catalog now that they've switched to annual licensing for webfonts (pay once use forever is gone)
  - internetter 2y ago
    Also the creator of Gill Sans—Eric Gill—sexually abused his children and dog. Licensing aside I wouldn’t touch this font with a 12 foot pole

dismalaf 2y ago

fonts.google.com has 1816 different font families that are all open-source. So no, I wouldn't steal a font when there's so many available for free.

devnullbrain 2y ago
There are many movies available for free
- hiccuphippo 2y ago
  Some of them even use those free fonts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVhlJNJopOQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVhlJNJopOQ

gorfian_robot 2y ago

I definitely would

TheRealPomax 2y ago

There was a nice video on how you can't copyright a typeface recently by "Ok, so" over on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J06tluN7rtE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J06tluN7rtE But you can copyright a font name, so if someone copies your work and releases it under a new name... that's that's like creating a copy of the car piece by piece and giving it your own name. So they were right: we not downloading a car, we never were. We were all just making copies.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

twobitshifter 2y ago

Typefaces are not copyrightable but fonts are off, using a font with a knockoff typeface is not copyright infringement because it is not using the copyrighted font.

r721 2y ago

>Powered by Iceshrimp Sort of off-topic, but interesting engine, which I never heard about (wasn't ever mentioned on HN either: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Iceshrimp https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Iceshrimp): >Iceshrimp is a decentralized and federated social networking service, implementing the ActivityPub standard. https://iceshrimp.dev/iceshrimp/iceshrimp.net https://iceshrimp.dev/iceshrimp/iceshrimp.net

rossy 2y ago
Iceshrimp, or at least this JavaScript version of it, is a fork of Misskey, which has been mentioned on HN a few times. If you've heard of Mastodon, Misskey and its forks participate in the same decentralized social network - Mastodon users can like and comment on the tweet-like posts that a Misskey user makes and vice-versa. The Iceshrimp devs are also working on a "port" to .NET that's basically a brand new social media app, but with an upgrade path from the JavaScript version. I also use Iceshrimp to self-host my own fediverse account and I think it's pretty good software. I think it has a better UI that Mastodon and it has some cutesy features that Mastodon lacks, like being able to emoji-react to posts.

curtisszmania 2y ago

[dead]

efitz 2y ago

I spent some time last weekend playing with LLMs and SVGs- it turns out SVG is a domain specific language and LLMs know how to use it. I was able to get an LLM (grok from X.ai) to author SVGs from a description of what I wanted it to look like, and to modify existing SVG text to customize files that weren’t perfectly to my liking. Fonts are also written in domain specific languages, I need to experiment with whether LLMs can author or modify fonts. I do not think that the ridiculous terms that font and clip art and stock photo companies now offer, is going to be a viable business model in a couple of years. We will all be able to use (for example) “LLM Helvetica Free” without any license.

gjohnhazel 2y ago
You inspired me to attempt this and sadly GPT, Claude, and Gemini all said they didn’t have the software tools to do it. But as you mentioned, it can generate SVGs and those can be used to create a font.

mchusma 2y ago

Copyright for most (if not all) fonts seems like something that just shouldn’t work. We want things in the public domain, like Shakespeare, and we want derivative works protected. Fonts are tiny differences on public domain work that 90% of people can’t tell. You wouldn’t want Disney to claim every pencil stroke difference on Mikey’s to be subject to different copyright terms, it would become a kind of perpetual copyright strategy. If there are true technical improvements to the way we represent letters, they should be covered by patents, with their shorter terms.

lobsterthief 2y ago
How do you encourage people to continue making new typefaces if anyone could use them immediately? FWIW, it does take significant time to design individual typefaces. It’s not just a set of characters: it’s the character in lowercase and uppercase, how letters appear differently when adjacent to certain other letters, punctuation, etc. A significant amount of time goes into the process.

rustcleaner 2y ago

If you've seen a bunch of memes on 4chan and 8chan with TEFF Renard, Trinite, and/or Lexicon fonts, that was me.

alpemre 2y ago

An AI font generatooorrrr!! (whoop whoop horn sound effect:)

amai 2y ago
https://www.calligrapher.ai/ https://www.calligrapher.ai/

GenshoTikamura 2y ago

What about stealing code from github, images from deviantart and pinterest, knowledge base from stackoverflow, etc, to train AI?

jokethrowaway 2y ago

The concept of "piracy" and copyright is completely ridiculous. Real piracy involves stealing, destroying and killing, not copying numbers. I never entered in a contract with you, producer of goods or innovation, you have no right to forbid me from copying anything. You may prevent your own customers from facilitating access of non paying customers to their goods (by making them sign a contract) and even persecute them in a civil court (for breach of contract). The fact that governments allow copyright owners to censor information on the internet to protect their commercial interest is just absolutely insane and incredibly damaging to the freedom of circulation of culture and ideas.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ummonk 2y ago

It’s clearly not the same font (you can see visible differences between the letters), and therefore not pirated. The appearance of a typeface can’t be copyrighted in the US - only the digital instructions used to render them (e.g. if someone visually inspects a font and clones it that is perfectly alright, as long as they don’t directly copy from and adapt the underlying font file).

akagusu 2y ago

They can steal you, but you can’t steal them; that’s the rule