4 ms·
the permission table he is talking about sounds like the copy-prevention bit in PDFs. it's up to the reader software to enforce it, and since PDF is mostly an
by there 18y ago
the permission table he is talking about sounds like the copy-prevention bit in PDFs. it's up to the reader software to enforce it, and since PDF is mostly an "open" specification, many free readers simply ignore it or allow the user to override it.
but how are fonts any different than stock images? a designer/photographer creates a work, then licenses it to end users that are entitled to use it. if you have a license to a stock image, you can use it on your website. i can copy it and use it on my site, but that would be illegal. how is this different than fonts? if you have a license to use a font, use it. i can copy it and use it on my site, but that would be illegal.
sites using stock images illegally are often sued or fined and there are a number of companies that offer services to find these illegally used images, even ones that have been resized or altered.
with fonts it seems like it would be even easier to automate the process of crawling websites looking for a particular font file and checking the licensing of it, especially since the font files wouldn't be altered.
- chancho 18y agoYou can take the font from a web page, use it in Illustrator for printed material (still the bread and butter of foundries), stretch it just a bit so that its no longer in exactly the same proportions, and it becomes very hard to prove where the font came from. I suspect the fear is not so much fonts being used on webpages, but fonts getting "out there" in general. I agree, though: probably an unfounded fear.
- tptacek 18y agoFirst, how do you take a bitmap from a web page, pull it into a vector program, and resize it without redrawing the entire font? Second, I think you'd be surprised by how good trained designers are at spotting typefaces. "Stretch out" Helvetica a bit, and a trained eye is going to know you just mutilated Helvetica.
- eli 18y agoNo, the whole thing we're talking about here is embedding the font files in the webpage so that we can finally use whatever font we want as a typeface.
- chancho 18y agohttp://potrace.sourceforge.net/ http://potrace.sourceforge.net/ but we weren't talking about bitmaps. I have no doubt that a trained typographer can identify fonts at 100 paces in a hurricane, but if he sees his font in printed material, contacts the publisher and says "That's my font" and the publisher says "No it's not" what is his recourse? He'd have to get some kind of order to search the publisher, or otherwise demand that the publisher prove that its a different font. How do you convince a judge that two fonts are the same, without superimposing them? Does "Look at the serifs!" hold up? I'm not saying that its impossible to prove the origin of a font, just that it gets a lot harder once you leave the digital world.
- tptacek 18y agoLook upthread, and apparently this happens all the time with stock photos.
- huhtenberg 18y ago> stretch it just a bit You are clearly not a graphic designer. Altering typeface proportions is the biggest no-no and the first sign of an amateur design botch-job. Just an FYI :-)
- chancho 18y ago> You are clearly not a graphic designer Which immediately follows from the presumption that I'm stealing fonts from webpages.
- wmf 18y agohow are fonts any different than stock images? Some font foundries won't sell you a Web license at any cost, and other foundries merely charge you an extortionate amount for a Web license. It's a cultural problem.
- tptacek 18y agoBecause the foundries are being included in a standards debate in which their own short-term interests are retarding long-term progress for everybody, and the implementors are working around that retardation in ways that are going to be disruptive for the foundries. It's Christiansen all over again. We'll get dynamic fonts. They'll be crappy at first, because Adobe and Monotype (and FontFont and HFJ) aren't going to play ball. But there are enough hungry indies out there that we'll start getting good dynamic web fonts, and those will take over the world and screw Monotype.
- eli 18y agoIt's doubly tricky with fonts because typefaces have a complicated legal status. Typeface designs cannot be copyrighted, though individual implementations (i.e. ttf files) can be. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typeface#Legal_aspects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typeface#Legal_aspects
- Silhouette 18y agoAnd even that is an over-simplification, because there are major differences between jurisdictions in the way copyright applies to fonts.
- wmf 18y agoYeah, maybe if we fixed the law to make typefaces explicitly copyrightable the designers would turn their paranoia down a little.
- LogicHoleFlaw 18y agoI'm not convinced that this is something that needs "fixing."
- wmf 18y agoWhy? Do you believe that fonts are not creative works? Would copyrightability of fonts hurt anyone?
- mkyc 18y agoThe question you want to be asking is if it will help anyone. The response to yours is yes, thousands of people. Google for anti-copyright for readings.
- wmf 18y agoI'm familiar with the anti-copyright arguments, but my point was that it seems inconsistent to have copyright on so many types of creative works except typefaces.
- anigbrowl 18y agoFonts are very different from stock images. They provide texture, not content: nobody goes to a web page to read 'Lorem Ipsum' written in an attractive font. I'd say a font is similar to the film stock on which a photo is shot. There are lots of cool and distinctive film stocks out there...but Kodak doesn't collect any royalties on the tasty silver halide look of an Ansel Adams photo.