Fonts and the legal standpoint

[jezza]

Like wise

[born2print]

I guess my posted view is the "letter of the law",
 and what we all do is "the spirit of the law"...

We're all font ninjas!
 

[hotmetal]

I know a lot of software engineers and high level programmers - some even still have jobs that haven't been sent to India - and the last thing you want to do is tell them you copy software (which includes fonts) without having the proper license. That mild mannered grey bearded geek, who used to follow the Grateful Dead from city to city, with thick glasses and a pocket protector full of pens, may look harmless, but that laser pointer isn't set to "stun."

Seriously, I'm well aware of what we have to do to get our work out. I've been dealing with this issue since the typeshop I was working in back around 1987 got a postscript film output device and I got my first disk to output for a client. They included the screen fonts with the job but not the printer fonts. Nothing changes.

When I got my first Mac at home, in 1990, an Apple engineer I'd known since high school dropped by to help me out with configuring it. I'd bought Pagemaker, Quark, and Freehand. The first thing Jon asked me was "do you understand that copying unlicensed software is theft and that professionals simply do not do it?" I assured him I understood this and he said, good, then I'll be happy to help you out. He explained a lot of stuff that has served me well over the years, like rebuilding the destop at least weekly and why running Apple's Disk First Aid before trying Norton was important. He also explained how fonts became corrupt, and why corrupt fonts were the main cause of crashed Macs. If you didn't have the original disk to re-load the font that had gone wonky, you were going to be in crash city forever. I've watched all of this, and more, unfold before me in shop after shop, year after year. And so on and so forth...

So repair those permissions. Empty that font cache. Up your FCBs! Do what you have to do to get the work out, but don't go around bragging about how easy it is to amass a huge mess of fonts. That one might burn you some day.

[Joe]

So repair those permissions. Empty that font cache. Up your FCBs! Do what you have to do to get the work out, but don't go around bragging about how easy it is to amass a huge mess of fonts. That one might burn you some day.

LOL...If I had my way I'd only need one font.

[beermonster]

i hear joe's a fan of brush script......well thats what pb 43 said....

so - we're really undecided whether, as a legal license owner of a font, you can supply it to an output device/printer etc for the production of that product.

[Joe]

I'm really a fan of all fonts but prefer Courier for my design work!

Yes that sums it up. We can't agree on anything around here!

[beermonster]

yes we can

[Joe]

No we can't. ???

[Gutnbg]

I'm really a fan of all fonts but prefer Courier for my design work!

I'm sure we can accommodate that. We just threw away all our fonts after reading this thread, whether we owned them or not, and Courier will be the only thing that prints anyway.

If your only font was Comic Sans, you would be sentenced to receive noogies from each prepress employee here at B4P.


(hmmm....B4P looks suspiciously like a strange smiley...Roy Orbison glasses, pointed nose, tongue sticking out. Was this done on purpose?)

[Joe]

(hmmm....B4P looks suspiciously like a strange smiley...Roy Orbison glasses, pointed nose, tongue sticking out. Was this done on purpose?)

Nope. Just a bonus I guess.

[Gutnbg]

Oh goody. I wondered if we were getting a bonus this year.

This one's better than last year's. 

[ninjaPB_43]

I have a HUGE collection of fonts, if anybody needs any.  I'd be more than glad to break the law.    





joke ster

[beermonster]

 

would someone who has a need for some fonts please "hold" a backup copy of my fonts for me - off my site - so if I have a problem here I can always "get" them back......

 

[G_Town]

A couple of us got into it a bit with one of the Adobe weenies, you've probably heard of him


In response to Chris' post and others in this thread, a few thoughts:

(1) Font hinting is not something restricted to either screen display or for devices that support anti-aliasing. Hinting helps determine exactly which typographic features are critical to render under low magnification conditions. Low magnification conditions are not restricted to 72 dpi screens. The degree to which font hinting assists in rendering type effectively depends on (a) device resolution, (b) the "point size" of the text being rendered with the particular font, and (c) the style characteristics of the particular typeface. (a) and (b) are fairly obvious. In the case of (c), the issues have to do primarily with serifs, thin stems, small open areas within particular characters, etc. For example, at 1200dpi, you probably won't see that much benefit of hinting using Helvetica. On the other hand, with the same conditions, Adobe Garamond or Bodoni would show significant differences in rendering. Without hinting, the effect is typically over-"boldness" or blotchiness of rendered text. Considering that many digital presses run at 600 dpi, the effect is even more pronounced under those printing conditions.

(2) Converting text to outlines not only degrades the print and certainly the display quality, but for PDF workflows, it results in highly bloated file sizes, text that is no longer searchable in Acrobat or Reader, and text that can no longer be subject of text touch-up or edit tools, either of Acrobat or third-party plug-ins.

(3) Generally speaking, font vendors that license fonts that completely prohibit embedding in fact also prohibit such outlining of text or even rasterization of same to get around the embedding restrictions. You should read some of the EULAs accompanying fonts. Actually, you must read them if you are going to use a particular font in your designs.

(4) Whether you or I like the unreasonable restrictions put by various font vendors on their products is irrelevant. Those restrictions are there and are indeed enforceable via contract law, at least in the United States. Unreasonable or spastic or even we've done it this way for years, is not a defense under contract law. Unless you are a lawyer involved with intellectual property issues, I'd be very careful about offering opinions about what is not a violation of a contract. Fonts are not significantly different than other digital assets such as clip art, photographs, etc.

(5) As the marketplace for fonts matures, some font vendors will certainly be looking for areas to increase yield. One of those areas often targeted is licensing violations. As a printer, the last thing you want to do is tie up your time and financial resources fighting such a lawsuit over use of customers' fonts.

(6) Designers and print customers need to be educated as to what they can and can't do with digital assets. They must check the EULA (end user license agreement) restrictions before licensing fonts as opposed to bellyaching about the situation after the fact. They should remember that they are the customer and if they don't like the restrictions of a particular font vendor's EULA, they can indeed bargain for a modified EULA, unlocked (for embedding) font files, etc. just like they bargain for anything else in commerce. If enough designers, print customers, and printers just said "no" to font vendors with unreasonable font embedding restrictions and voted with their wallets, perhaps such font vendors might get the message as customers vaporized.

(7) With regards to any and all fonts licensed from Adobe, we certainly do allow printers to use the versions of such fonts supplied by the customer with the restriction that the printer must have their own licensed copy of that font. The easiest means of accomplishing such licensing from Adobe is with Adobe's Font Folio product. Compared to the cost of licensing individual fonts from Adobe and certainly compared to the various hardware and supply costs faced by printers, the cost of Font Folio is fairly reasonable.

( Note also that all fonts licensed from Adobe include preview and print embedding privileges for PostScript, EPS, and PDF. For PDF workflows with embedded fonts, if all you are doing is preflighting, previewing, proofing, and printing those PDF files, there is no need for any further licensing of fonts. If you want to edit source document files or touch up text in PDF files (not recommended in the general case), licensing of the fonts is required.

    * Dov


So Read your EULA's 

[Laurens]

....I've never heard of the font police showing up to enforce it though.

A couple of years ago the BSA decided to 'make a point' in Belgium. They showed up at a couple of printers front door at 8 in the morning, along with a legal team. There would be an audit in which invariably a number of fonts (and applications) where found that no one could prove ownership of. On the spot the team would make an offer to pay XXX euro to legalize the situation. If the owner refused, the workstations would be sealed. I've heard of one printer in Brussels who resisted for a day and a half. Once his presses started shutting down one by one, the fee was paid. Sales of font libraries soared in the months after!