4 ms·

Let me fix the title: "The Sorry State of Typography Licensing" It has always been, and will continue to be, a pain, because the foundries have the same minds

Let me fix the title: "The Sorry State of Typography Licensing" It has always been, and will continue to be, a pain, because the foundries have the same mindset as recording labels, movie studios, etc.

tptacek 14y ago
Yes: that their work, which is simultaneously an incredibly time consuming craft and a luxury good that nobody can reasonably claim a native entitlement to, deserves to be remunerated at rates that the market sets.
- theevocater 14y ago
  I think the point the article is trying to make is that they would make more money if they didn't price out most (perceived) buyers.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    I get the point the article is making, but I think the article is wrong. Just because web nerds don't understand why a good is priced the way it is doesn't make that pricing irrational. You can't even license H+FJ fonts for web applications; they're not even "priced out" - you have to be one of the "cool kids" to use them. H+FJ seems to be doing just fine.
    - Silhouette 14y ago
      You can't even license H+FJ fonts for web applications; they're not even "priced out" - you have to be one of the "cool kids" to use them. So in other words, hcarvalhoalves was right, and the state of typography licensing in general really is a mess.
      - tptacek 14y ago
        No, products not being made available to you on the terms and pricing you demand do not mean the market in which those products are offered is a "mess". The perspective you (and this posting) espouse is profoundly narcissistic.
        Silhouette 14y ago
        No, products not being made available to you on the terms and pricing you demand do not mean the market in which those products are offered is a "mess". Perhaps not, but a product not being made available at all means the market is a mess. We're not talking about some scarce physical product. We're talking about information and creativity, which in the modern world can be trivially reproduced at negligible marginal cost. And we're talking about applying that information in different contexts, in some cases completely unchanged and in other cases being transformed in ways that might require no additional work from the original creator. Copyright exists in law, and I have often defended it on the basis that it serves a useful economic purpose in encouraging the creation and distribution of new works despite the low marginal cost of reproduction. But it is an economic tool, not an ethical one. If a work isn't made available by its creator for some reasonable price on useful terms, then there is a reasonable argument for removing the legal protection and letting anyone who wants a copy have one regardless, because the creator demonstrably wasn't going to benefit economically from those people anyway so no harm has been done. It's exactly the same argument that applies to patent trolls. Patents are fundamentally an artificial legal barrier to doing something you could otherwise do. The only possible justification for imposing such artificial constraints on individual freedoms in the first place is that they serve some greater good for society (and some would argue with it even then, but let's talk about what the law actually says today). When you reach the point where patents aren't being exploited by a patent holder who is actually working to make the documented inventions, and they're just a legal club to extract money from other people or act as an artificial barrier to entry for disruptive entrants in the market, it's time to change the system so either it encourages the greater good it's supposed to or the artificial barriers are removed entirely.
        tptacek 14y ago
        There is no reasonable comparison between a patent troll, who precludes you from benefiting from your own creative work, and a type foundry.
- Silhouette 14y ago
  That's a dubious argument. For one thing, much of the market sets the rate for top quality fonts at $0, just as it did with music before legal download sites killed off the $20+ CD album with three good tracks and a dozen fillers. On a personal note, I do value good quality typography in various professional and occasionally even personal work, and I do spend my own hard-earned money to buy the fonts I use legally. However, I have certainly paid less than I would have, because even as a typophile willing to open his wallet, now that I've got a few really good choices available, any further purchases are luxuries. One of my companies recently bought some fonts for branding purposes. Initially we bought three from a family that we were fairly sure we wanted. Happy with the results of our initial design work, we went back a few weeks later to find the foundry had hiked up prices to nearly double their previous rate. Instead of completing the set for future-proofing purposes, we just walked away and made do with what we already had. And we didn't hire the web fonts at all, we just created some PNGs in Photoshop for key branding graphics, and use good, free web fonts for the rest. If we could pay $20 for a real web font licence (not some renewable/pay per view/pay per server/other junk) or $100 for a whole family, then I imagine we'd be buying new stuff every time we ran a themed campaign on our site. At closer to $100 for a single font and $1,000+ for a serious family without even getting a web licence thrown in, it's just not worth it. It's the 21st century, and we have the Internet now. Maybe foundries that want to make a good return on all their hard work need to think less like the movie/music dinosaurs and more like Apple and Valve.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    No, the "market" does not set the "rate" for "top quality fonts" at "$0". When people take commercial services without paying for them, that's not a market function. All the work that goes into trying to make people not honor contracts is deadweight loss. As you know, the "thing you refer to as the market but isn't" also doesn't set the rate for top quality fonts at $0. By all means, pirate fonts for your meaningless project that nobody will ever see or give a shit about. But if that project ever goes anywhere, it's pretty hard to hide the fact that you stole FF Meta or H+FJ Vitesse or Chaparral. You'll just get sued, and you'll lose. Fonts are not like music. People steal music for private enjoyment and primarily get caught when they redistribute their stolen tracks. That's not what happens with fonts.

tptacek 14y ago

Yes: that their work, which is simultaneously an incredibly time consuming craft and a luxury good that nobody can reasonably claim a native entitlement to, deserves to be remunerated at rates that the market sets.

theevocater 14y ago
I think the point the article is trying to make is that they would make more money if they didn't price out most (perceived) buyers.
- tptacek 14y ago
  I get the point the article is making, but I think the article is wrong. Just because web nerds don't understand why a good is priced the way it is doesn't make that pricing irrational. You can't even license H+FJ fonts for web applications; they're not even "priced out" - you have to be one of the "cool kids" to use them. H+FJ seems to be doing just fine.
  - Silhouette 14y ago
    You can't even license H+FJ fonts for web applications; they're not even "priced out" - you have to be one of the "cool kids" to use them. So in other words, hcarvalhoalves was right, and the state of typography licensing in general really is a mess.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      No, products not being made available to you on the terms and pricing you demand do not mean the market in which those products are offered is a "mess". The perspective you (and this posting) espouse is profoundly narcissistic.
      - Silhouette 14y ago
        No, products not being made available to you on the terms and pricing you demand do not mean the market in which those products are offered is a "mess". Perhaps not, but a product not being made available at all means the market is a mess. We're not talking about some scarce physical product. We're talking about information and creativity, which in the modern world can be trivially reproduced at negligible marginal cost. And we're talking about applying that information in different contexts, in some cases completely unchanged and in other cases being transformed in ways that might require no additional work from the original creator. Copyright exists in law, and I have often defended it on the basis that it serves a useful economic purpose in encouraging the creation and distribution of new works despite the low marginal cost of reproduction. But it is an economic tool, not an ethical one. If a work isn't made available by its creator for some reasonable price on useful terms, then there is a reasonable argument for removing the legal protection and letting anyone who wants a copy have one regardless, because the creator demonstrably wasn't going to benefit economically from those people anyway so no harm has been done. It's exactly the same argument that applies to patent trolls. Patents are fundamentally an artificial legal barrier to doing something you could otherwise do. The only possible justification for imposing such artificial constraints on individual freedoms in the first place is that they serve some greater good for society (and some would argue with it even then, but let's talk about what the law actually says today). When you reach the point where patents aren't being exploited by a patent holder who is actually working to make the documented inventions, and they're just a legal club to extract money from other people or act as an artificial barrier to entry for disruptive entrants in the market, it's time to change the system so either it encourages the greater good it's supposed to or the artificial barriers are removed entirely.
        tptacek 14y ago
        There is no reasonable comparison between a patent troll, who precludes you from benefiting from your own creative work, and a type foundry.
Silhouette 14y ago
That's a dubious argument. For one thing, much of the market sets the rate for top quality fonts at $0, just as it did with music before legal download sites killed off the $20+ CD album with three good tracks and a dozen fillers. On a personal note, I do value good quality typography in various professional and occasionally even personal work, and I do spend my own hard-earned money to buy the fonts I use legally. However, I have certainly paid less than I would have, because even as a typophile willing to open his wallet, now that I've got a few really good choices available, any further purchases are luxuries. One of my companies recently bought some fonts for branding purposes. Initially we bought three from a family that we were fairly sure we wanted. Happy with the results of our initial design work, we went back a few weeks later to find the foundry had hiked up prices to nearly double their previous rate. Instead of completing the set for future-proofing purposes, we just walked away and made do with what we already had. And we didn't hire the web fonts at all, we just created some PNGs in Photoshop for key branding graphics, and use good, free web fonts for the rest. If we could pay $20 for a real web font licence (not some renewable/pay per view/pay per server/other junk) or $100 for a whole family, then I imagine we'd be buying new stuff every time we ran a themed campaign on our site. At closer to $100 for a single font and $1,000+ for a serious family without even getting a web licence thrown in, it's just not worth it. It's the 21st century, and we have the Internet now. Maybe foundries that want to make a good return on all their hard work need to think less like the movie/music dinosaurs and more like Apple and Valve.
- tptacek 14y ago
  No, the "market" does not set the "rate" for "top quality fonts" at "$0". When people take commercial services without paying for them, that's not a market function. All the work that goes into trying to make people not honor contracts is deadweight loss. As you know, the "thing you refer to as the market but isn't" also doesn't set the rate for top quality fonts at $0. By all means, pirate fonts for your meaningless project that nobody will ever see or give a shit about. But if that project ever goes anywhere, it's pretty hard to hide the fact that you stole FF Meta or H+FJ Vitesse or Chaparral. You'll just get sued, and you'll lose. Fonts are not like music. People steal music for private enjoyment and primarily get caught when they redistribute their stolen tracks. That's not what happens with fonts.