RE: the alternative?

I wrote:
>>>This will *never* happen, any site that is distributing stolen fonts openly
>>>on 
>>>the net will be closed down.

Simon Daniels:
>
>Why not? What is to stop designers loading a copyrighted Type 1 font
>into Fontographer, stripping out all the copyright information, altering
>the outlines slightly (they'll still look the same on screen), hacking
>out those unwanted accented characters and then saving it out as a
>TrueType font for distribution from a site in the way I've described?
>People get away with doing this now, and even have the cheek to sell the
>results on CD Rom. They are not going to stop doing so on the Web for
>fear of prosecution. The only way to stop this from happening is to give
>designers an alternative - and I can't see any other  alternative except
>for secure, legal embedding of fonts specifically licensed for this
>purpose.

The above is an example of illegal use of font data, proving that is something 
else, however it *is* illegal.

What I considered was meant in the example given was that, for example, some 
idiot would put the entire Adobe library on their server and let anyone link to 
that. Whatever way both examples are illegal and would result in legal action 
from the copyright holder. That was essentially my point, these issues are 
already dealt with in law, may be not international law in some cases, but at 
least in the countries where this is most likely to happen.

I have no problem as I have said before with legal/secure embedding, I just want 
to make sure it is. And that such a resource gets paid for by its "publisher".

Besides the fact that I don't think many *designers* are that interested in 
hacking other peoples fonts up, from my experience they are more than willing to 
license where appropriate/affordable, as at the end of the day they don't pay 
for it, their client does. 

Again from my experience such clients are willing to respect the IP of 
authors/designers, or go the other route (as Microsoft has) and have their own 
fonts designed for distribution, but as Bill Hill has already acknowledged this 
second option would effectively, if the only financially secure course available 
to type designers, stifle the creativity and flexibilty of that particular 
market.


-- Clive

Received on Friday, 23 August 1996 18:29:27 UTC