5 ms·

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.

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 1y ago
You can't copyright a font.
- datadrivenangel 1y ago
  They absolutely are copyrighted and big money.
  - EvanAnderson 1y 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 1y 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.
      - Aloisius 1y ago
        You can't copyright the name of a font in the US. You can trademark it.
    - weinzierl 1y ago
      In the 90s Corel Draw came with a Helvetica named Swiss. Microsoft wasn't as bold and called theirs Arial.
      - floriankarsten 1y ago
        [dead]
      - glacier5674 1y ago
        [dead]
      - Gormo 1y ago
        Corel's "Swiss" font is identical to Helvetica. Arial has many differences.
    - devmor 1y ago
      > In the US you can't copyright the shape of a font. You can copyright the programmatic description of a font. The organization in question is a UK organization, and you can in fact copyright a font in the UK. The US is unrelated to this issue.
  - colechristensen 1y ago
    You can, entirely legally, make a copy of any font and distribute it freely. You can't copy the font files themselves, but you can make visually indistinguishable new fonts with the same shapes because the shapes are not protected by copyright. Additionally though, some fonts have design patents, which does protect the shape. Unlike copyright which has absolutely crazy expiration (like 150 years occasionally?) these patents only cover 15 to 20 years or shorter if abandoned. An example of Apple patenting a font valid 2017 to 2032: https://patents.google.com/patent/USD786338S1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/USD786338S1/en
    - raincole 1y ago
      So if I already have the file (legally acquired or not), I'm free to use it for print? Cause obviously distributing T-shirts isn't distributing font files?
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - Gormo 1y ago
        In the US, yes.
      - colechristensen 1y ago
        It depends on if it has a design patent on it or not.
- WillAdams 1y ago
  A typeface design, in the U.S., no, but the digital font file comprising outline data and instructions, according to current U.S. law, for an overview of current case law and a proposal see: https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/chtlj/vol10/iss1/5/ https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/chtlj/vol10/iss1/5/
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    There's no evidence XBAND Rough was extracted from a digital source bit-for-bit, unless someone can point to any? It seems like it was just a hobbyist project to recreate the look of the font from the anti-piracy ads? Which is 100% legal. Edit: OK, so the original font appears to be "FF Confidential"? Why didn't the post even mention that? So maybe it is a digital clone, which would be illegal. But then strange that there aren't any DMCA takedowns of it on major font sites?
    - selkin 1y ago
      XBAND Rough could not have been inspired by those ads, as the OP shows the ads are using XBAND, and not FF Confidential, the original tyepface it cloned.
      - s4i 1y ago
        We don’t know what the ads (meaning, the videos) used. We only know what was on their website.
    - sct202 1y ago
      Idk if it's provable how it was recreated but if you type in "XBAND Rough" into the sampler box at the bottom of the page https://www.myfonts.com/collections/ff-confidential-font-fontfont https://www.myfonts.com/collections/ff-confidential-font-fon... and compare to https://fontzone.net/font-details/xband-rough https://fontzone.net/font-details/xband-rough it's exactly the same and the letter splotching is very distinct in the lower case letters.
      - 1y ago
- taneliv 1y ago
  Maybe not in the US, but fonts do enjoy copyright protection in at least some European markets.[1] I frequently encountered this campaign on DVDs for rent in the local Blockbuster equivalents, so I don't think it is entirely theoretical infringement, either. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces#Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti... and forward
- NikkiA 1y ago
  FACT/FAST are a UK organisation, where font copyright is espressly enumerated in the copyright law.
- andirk 1y ago
  "You wouldn't copyright a font"
- xyst 1y ago
  You can copyright just about anything as long as you have the _money_ T-Mobile trademarked a very specific pink, "Magenta" There’s even a company that holds trademarks on a set of colors, Pantone. Courts have yet to reverse or revoke these silly trademarks.
  - usefulcat 1y ago
    Trademark and copyright are not the same thing..
  - dredmorbius 1y ago
    Trademark != copyright.
  - lotsofpulp 1y ago
    T-Mobile does not have a trademark on the color magenta, nor does Pantone on any colors. The trademark is for using that color to market your product such that a buyer might assume they are buying T-mobile, but in reality they are not. Or for Pantone, that a buyer is buying a color quality controlled by Pantone.
NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
> was itself arguably a copyright-infringing knock-off. In US law, there is no such thing. The shape of a glyph (or many) isn't even slightly copyrightable. This is settled law. Fonts (on computers) have a special status that makes them semi-copyrightable in that some jackass judge from the 1980s called them "computer programs" and so they have the same protection as software... but this won't protect against knockoffs.
- spookie 1y ago
  Well they're programs tbf
- codedokode 1y ago
  Is this fair? It actually takes a lot of work (I assume) to design letter's shapes. Of course, not counting those who just trace 16-th century font without paying a compensation.
  - amgutier 1y ago
    > Of course, not counting those who just trace 16-th century font without paying a compensation I can't tell which way you mean this, but that sounds similar to the situation with most public domain musical compositions - the manuscripts may be completely open but a specific typesetting can still under copyright. And like that case, "just" tracing a font / typesetting a composition is still a fair amount of work.
  - ars 1y ago
    > takes a lot of work The "sweat of the brow" argument is not valid in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
    - snypher 1y ago
      >Under the Feist ruling in the US, mere collections of facts are considered unoriginal and thus not protected by copyright, no matter how much work went into collating them. This person isn't just collecting existing letter shapes; inventing a new letter shapes would be protected by copyright?
nailer 1y ago
The song is also stolen: it’s an unauthorised interpolation of one man army by the prodigy: https://open.spotify.com/track/65zwPZvsUCU55IpyWddFsK?si=bBfKn_yUR1WooV7yhQ1R_g&context=spotify%3Asearch%3Aone%2Bman https://open.spotify.com/track/65zwPZvsUCU55IpyWddFsK?si=bBf...
- Thorrez 1y ago
  How does that square with this article, which says that the music was composed by Dutch musician Melchior Rietveldt specifically for the ad? (And that they failed to pay him properly for the use of the music.) https://torrentfreak.com/rights-group-fined-for-not-paying-artist-for-anti-piracy-ad-120717/ https://torrentfreak.com/rights-group-fined-for-not-paying-a...
  - nailer 1y ago
    Melchior Rietveldt’s work was for a different antipiracy ad https://torrentfreak.com/sorry-the-you-wouldnt-steal-a-car-anti-piracy-ad-wasnt-pirated-170625/ https://torrentfreak.com/sorry-the-you-wouldnt-steal-a-car-a...

charcircuit 1y ago

You can't copyright a font.

datadrivenangel 1y ago
They absolutely are copyrighted and big money.
- EvanAnderson 1y 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 1y 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.
    - Aloisius 1y ago
      You can't copyright the name of a font in the US. You can trademark it.
  - weinzierl 1y ago
    In the 90s Corel Draw came with a Helvetica named Swiss. Microsoft wasn't as bold and called theirs Arial.
    - floriankarsten 1y ago
      [dead]
    - glacier5674 1y ago
      [dead]
    - Gormo 1y ago
      Corel's "Swiss" font is identical to Helvetica. Arial has many differences.
  - devmor 1y ago
    > In the US you can't copyright the shape of a font. You can copyright the programmatic description of a font. The organization in question is a UK organization, and you can in fact copyright a font in the UK. The US is unrelated to this issue.
- colechristensen 1y ago
  You can, entirely legally, make a copy of any font and distribute it freely. You can't copy the font files themselves, but you can make visually indistinguishable new fonts with the same shapes because the shapes are not protected by copyright. Additionally though, some fonts have design patents, which does protect the shape. Unlike copyright which has absolutely crazy expiration (like 150 years occasionally?) these patents only cover 15 to 20 years or shorter if abandoned. An example of Apple patenting a font valid 2017 to 2032: https://patents.google.com/patent/USD786338S1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/USD786338S1/en
  - raincole 1y ago
    So if I already have the file (legally acquired or not), I'm free to use it for print? Cause obviously distributing T-shirts isn't distributing font files?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - Gormo 1y ago
      In the US, yes.
    - colechristensen 1y ago
      It depends on if it has a design patent on it or not.
WillAdams 1y ago
A typeface design, in the U.S., no, but the digital font file comprising outline data and instructions, according to current U.S. law, for an overview of current case law and a proposal see: https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/chtlj/vol10/iss1/5/ https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/chtlj/vol10/iss1/5/
- crazygringo 1y ago
  There's no evidence XBAND Rough was extracted from a digital source bit-for-bit, unless someone can point to any? It seems like it was just a hobbyist project to recreate the look of the font from the anti-piracy ads? Which is 100% legal. Edit: OK, so the original font appears to be "FF Confidential"? Why didn't the post even mention that? So maybe it is a digital clone, which would be illegal. But then strange that there aren't any DMCA takedowns of it on major font sites?
  - selkin 1y ago
    XBAND Rough could not have been inspired by those ads, as the OP shows the ads are using XBAND, and not FF Confidential, the original tyepface it cloned.
    - s4i 1y ago
      We don’t know what the ads (meaning, the videos) used. We only know what was on their website.
  - sct202 1y ago
    Idk if it's provable how it was recreated but if you type in "XBAND Rough" into the sampler box at the bottom of the page https://www.myfonts.com/collections/ff-confidential-font-fontfont https://www.myfonts.com/collections/ff-confidential-font-fon... and compare to https://fontzone.net/font-details/xband-rough https://fontzone.net/font-details/xband-rough it's exactly the same and the letter splotching is very distinct in the lower case letters.
    - 1y ago
taneliv 1y ago
Maybe not in the US, but fonts do enjoy copyright protection in at least some European markets.[1] I frequently encountered this campaign on DVDs for rent in the local Blockbuster equivalents, so I don't think it is entirely theoretical infringement, either. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces#Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti... and forward
NikkiA 1y ago
FACT/FAST are a UK organisation, where font copyright is espressly enumerated in the copyright law.
andirk 1y ago
"You wouldn't copyright a font"
xyst 1y ago
You can copyright just about anything as long as you have the _money_ T-Mobile trademarked a very specific pink, "Magenta" There’s even a company that holds trademarks on a set of colors, Pantone. Courts have yet to reverse or revoke these silly trademarks.
- usefulcat 1y ago
  Trademark and copyright are not the same thing..
- dredmorbius 1y ago
  Trademark != copyright.
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  T-Mobile does not have a trademark on the color magenta, nor does Pantone on any colors. The trademark is for using that color to market your product such that a buyer might assume they are buying T-mobile, but in reality they are not. Or for Pantone, that a buyer is buying a color quality controlled by Pantone.

NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago

> was itself arguably a copyright-infringing knock-off. In US law, there is no such thing. The shape of a glyph (or many) isn't even slightly copyrightable. This is settled law. Fonts (on computers) have a special status that makes them semi-copyrightable in that some jackass judge from the 1980s called them "computer programs" and so they have the same protection as software... but this won't protect against knockoffs.

spookie 1y ago
Well they're programs tbf
codedokode 1y ago
Is this fair? It actually takes a lot of work (I assume) to design letter's shapes. Of course, not counting those who just trace 16-th century font without paying a compensation.
- amgutier 1y ago
  > Of course, not counting those who just trace 16-th century font without paying a compensation I can't tell which way you mean this, but that sounds similar to the situation with most public domain musical compositions - the manuscripts may be completely open but a specific typesetting can still under copyright. And like that case, "just" tracing a font / typesetting a composition is still a fair amount of work.
- ars 1y ago
  > takes a lot of work The "sweat of the brow" argument is not valid in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
  - snypher 1y ago
    >Under the Feist ruling in the US, mere collections of facts are considered unoriginal and thus not protected by copyright, no matter how much work went into collating them. This person isn't just collecting existing letter shapes; inventing a new letter shapes would be protected by copyright?

nailer 1y ago

The song is also stolen: it’s an unauthorised interpolation of one man army by the prodigy: https://open.spotify.com/track/65zwPZvsUCU55IpyWddFsK?si=bBfKn_yUR1WooV7yhQ1R_g&context=spotify%3Asearch%3Aone%2Bman https://open.spotify.com/track/65zwPZvsUCU55IpyWddFsK?si=bBf...

Thorrez 1y ago
How does that square with this article, which says that the music was composed by Dutch musician Melchior Rietveldt specifically for the ad? (And that they failed to pay him properly for the use of the music.) https://torrentfreak.com/rights-group-fined-for-not-paying-artist-for-anti-piracy-ad-120717/ https://torrentfreak.com/rights-group-fined-for-not-paying-a...
- nailer 1y ago
  Melchior Rietveldt’s work was for a different antipiracy ad https://torrentfreak.com/sorry-the-you-wouldnt-steal-a-car-anti-piracy-ad-wasnt-pirated-170625/ https://torrentfreak.com/sorry-the-you-wouldnt-steal-a-car-a...