Re: The unmentionable

But music is largely listened to off-line in private where no one knows whether the copy was obtained legitimately or not. 

On the other hand fonts on the web are used in public and, if proper records are kept, it should be reasonably straight forward for font vendors to determine whether that use is properly licensed or not. 

Anyone who uses an unlicensed font on their website is sooner or later likely to get caught. One or two well publicized cases should get the message across.

- CF   

-------- Original-Nachricht --------
> Datum: Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:37:38 -0700
> Von: John Hudson <tiro@tiro.com>
> An: www-font@w3.org
> Betreff: Re: The unmentionable

> Dirk Pranke wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 1:54 PM, John Hudson<tiro@tiro.com> wrote:
> >>> As to seeing the users do the wrong thing, I also have seen a
> >>> tremendous number of people pirate MP3s, but that doesn't mean that
> >>> iTunes and Amazon are now doing the wrong thing by selling files in
> >>> that format.
> >> Fonts are not music.
> 
> > The analogy to music was purely intended to illustrate the
> > consequences of trusting (or not trusting) your customers. I was not
> > attempting to claim that music was analogous to fonts.
> 
> I understood that to be your point. My counter point is that the 
> differences between fonts and music, and the different customer base, 
> imply different markets, not least in terms of scale. I don't think the 
> retail MP3 business model has anything to do with 'trusting customers' 
> per se, and everything to do with an economy of scale in which massive 
> unlicensed copying and sharing is an acceptable cost of doing business 
> because the income from the people who pay are similarly massive. This 
> is because, as a consumer product, the overall demand for music files 
> includes a very large number of people who will pay. The overall demand 
> for fonts includes a relatively small number of people who will pay, and 
> a majority of other people who either refuse to pay or who simply don't 
> realise that they are supposed to pay.
> 
> Further, the vast majority of computer users are exposed to fonts as 
> things that 'come with their computer', either bundled with the OS or 
> with other software. They are not customers of the font vendors in any 
> direct sense, so it is not a question of whether we trust our customers 
> or not. Our actual customers tend to understand our position because we 
> have relationships with them -- at least, we tend to if we're small 
> independent font foundries in which the font vendor is also the type 
> designer --, and they understand the value of what we're licensing to 
> them. And, once again, the people who are concerned about protecting 
> fonts against casual misuse are in some cases the customer and the web 
> author.
> 
> For the most part, we trust our customers just fine. It's everyone else 
> we worry about. :)
> 
> JH

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Received on Thursday, 30 July 2009 12:36:21 UTC