[HN Gopher] Font licensing is ill, please help heal it
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Font licensing is ill, please help heal it
Author : dna_polymerase
Score : 132 points
Date : 2021-09-03 12:53 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fontsarena.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (fontsarena.com)
| webpdf wrote:
| https://twitter.com/WebPDFpro/status/1427911634387836935
|
| Helvetica Now Variable Complete Family Unlimited for only
| $2,705,353,197,552,556,500.00
|
| That is two quintillion seven hundred five quadrillion three
| hundred fifty-three trillion one hundred ninety-seven billion
| five hundred fifty-two million five hundred fifty-six thousand
| five hundred dollars!!
| denvaar wrote:
| I agree with this. It's too complicated and frustrating to use a
| licensed font on the web. The argument is that people who make
| fonts deserve to be compensated for their work, and I agree.
| There has to be a better way though. I avoid using fonts that I
| love because the licensing just gets in the way.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > There has to be a better way though.
|
| Crowdfunding has been extremely successful at fostering the
| creation of freely-licensed content while handsomely rewarding
| the creators for that same content. (It's easy to miss this
| because it's only a fraction of what's crowdfunded as a whole,
| but free content still wins wrt. its broader impact.) There's
| no reason why this model could not be applicable to the design
| of new, high-quality fonts. Font makers only have to name their
| price, commit to an open license on the product and roll the
| dice.
| stevenhubertron wrote:
| Just a data point. My team manages about 15 different brands with
| a couple hundred million annual page views and we pay north of
| $100K a year for fonts and believe that to be a good value for
| the money. The difference between a good Monotype font and a free
| or cheap font is worlds different when your concerned with a
| brand looking as good as can be. The cheaper fonts sometimes have
| odd space in them that make letter spacing or line-height changes
| look horrible.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Purely out of curiosity, have you done any testing to see if
| the better fonts lead to better results?
| stevenhubertron wrote:
| We haven't. Although we do plenty of testing in general. We
| don't view it as a ROI driver, just an element of a strong
| brand. Which is much more subjective.
| dhosek wrote:
| Surely just aesthetic pleasure is worth something? Shall we
| all live, work and play in brutalist utilitarian buildings
| unless it can be demonstrated that there are better results
| from something else?
|
| I used to work at eharmony. One of the biggest complaints we
| had from users was that paid users were still shown ads. The
| users hated it, but the analytics showed that we made more
| money with the ads than without the ads so to hell with the
| users' experience on the site, we had better results with the
| ads.
| marstall wrote:
| new to the fonts space, but I really wanted a totally unique look
| for a new site I'm building and came upon an font foundry called
| photo-lettering. The story of how itsfonts came to exist and be
| available on the web is truly cool (and informs this debate a
| little).
|
| Photo-lettering, Inc aka PLINC was a high-end foundry and design
| firm in New York City beginning in the 1930s that was used as a
| volume service provider by Madison Avenue (think proofs flying
| across midtown via courier). Their unique claim to fame was that
| each individual letter of their font faces existed as a large
| photographic plate which was then projected onto layouts using a
| proprietary overhead system. The result satisfied the exacting
| needs of magazine designers and such in this era.
|
| Fast-forward to the present, and the fonts, which are supercool
| in a 60s 70s way (think warholesque), have been scanned and
| lovingly converted to webfonts, using various advanced features
| available in opentype etc.
|
| They do use that funny desktop/webfont pricing described by the
| OP. I'm more than willing to plunk down $125 apiece for the 2
| fonts I'm using because of the obvious value this company is
| offering. The pricing does get into nosebleed territory
| relatively quickly, but this is a product I feel really good
| about supporting.
|
| For the full PLINC rabbit hole ...
| https://www.photolettering.com/about/history/drawer_one/
| metalliqaz wrote:
| This article makes a strange contradiction.
|
| "people visit websites for information they're interested in, not
| design and not the font in which text is rendered in"
|
| If that's the case, then what's the problem? You can use plenty
| of attractive fonts already installed on client devices, or
| something like Google Fonts for free. If the design isn't
| important, then that's more than enough.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Yes, if it didn't matter, why would I care that some fonts are
| crazy expensive.
| thayne wrote:
| I've seen licenses where you pay per CPU on the server(s). What
| does that even mean if you serve the font using something like
| S3? And if you use a CDN, do you have to pay for the CPUs at the
| edge too?
|
| Unreasonable licensing for web fonts results in companies not
| buying those fonts.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| asadkn wrote:
| And that's why I either use the awesome opensource fonts (they've
| really very good lately), or use Adobe Fonts (formerly TypeKit).
|
| As much as I hate Adobe, the rented fixed monthly payment is the
| only logical alternative to current font pricing models for web.
| Rent Photoshop for $10 a month and you get Adobe Fonts for web
| with unlimited usage, as a bonus.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Honestly the whole idea of creators controlling their IP is
| fucked. Everywhere, everyone wants to get in on carving out a
| million monetizable use cases while the rest of us collapse under
| the weight of an entirely bullshit system of rights enforcement.
|
| We should not have to walk on eggshells!
|
| Here's an alternative: anything you put out there, isn't yours
| any more. It belongs to the public. Art, software, music,
| _fonts_... it is in the hands of the people. Your role as creator
| is limited to stewardship.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I agree with all of this, but there's also a flip side.
|
| If you benefit from somebody's work, you should find ways to
| support it. Not because it belongs to anybody, but because
| whatever it is, you should have an incentive to keep it going.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Giving creators a monopoly over their creation for a limited
| time is a good thing.
|
| However, life of the author plus 70 years, and whatever that
| means if a company owns it instead of a flesh-and-blood
| individual, is way too long. I can't even come up with a reason
| to defend that isn't "I'd like to create a multi-generational
| legacy and copyright minefield based on my IP so I can collect
| royalties without having to actually do anything productive."
|
| In modern times it should maybe be 5-7 years, ability to
| collect significant damages shouldn't start until works are
| formally registered, and if you don't use your works in a
| commercial revenue-generating activity, the protection expires
| after 1 or 2 years. Longer or shorter durations for certain
| industries may make sense.
| vmception wrote:
| Only a piece of the solution, you still need the economic
| incentive, and that incentive shouldn't be just hoping you're
| popular enough for people to donate to your stewardship.
|
| Let me know what you come up with, there are likely some crafty
| solutions.
| derbOac wrote:
| So, focusing on fonts and types in particular:
|
| I drifted a way from worrying about typefaces but for awhile
| was really focused on them for publication reasons.
|
| Things have changed a lot in the last 10 years or so because
| of Google Fonts and other similar things but my impression
| has always been:
|
| 1. For whatever reason, there seems to be this black-and-
| white schema that font licenses either need to be
| ridiculously expensive and locked down, or completely free.
| I've never really understood why you couldn't go buy a
| personal use of a font (with generous use allowances) for
| say, 10 USD. The idea that people might actually be willing
| to pay if it were affordable seems lost, probably because
| it's usually large firms commissioning the typefaces to begin
| with. But if you make it for an initial project, reap the
| benefits, and can relicense it, why not do so understanding
| that you might make some money from large numbers of small
| purchases? (For what it's worth, I think similar issues arise
| in other areas where there's overly restrictive IP -- you get
| this black-and-white seesaw between draconian IP and totally
| libre offerings as a blacklash, with nothing in between).
|
| 2. What seems to evolved in some cases is some initial
| commission by a large firm, followed by libre licensing
| afterward, which makes some sense to me. Then the designer
| gets paid a large fee, people get to ooh and aah at the
| beautiful font, and the company gets extra advertising for
| commissioning a nice libre font. It's basically a form of
| advertising -- people download the font and see that company
| A paid for it, and then they get some branding association.
| The desire for fresh branding and individuating, along with
| goodwill, is part of what drives the commissions. Or put some
| relatively brief term on the commercial font, after which it
| becomes open.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I've been working full time on Open Source software for 20
| years. I don't get paid for it, though I do derive income
| from lectures, training, and other paid gigs as a result.
| I've also turned down many high paying job offers as another
| consequence.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Universal Basic Income could help a lot here. The rise of
| open-source and volunteer movements shows that a lot of
| people want to work on what they are passionate about, if
| only for their jobs and the need to earn money.
|
| UBI may not solve this entirely but if it can free people of
| the need to worry about their economics whilst simultaneously
| allowing people to do whatever they want, for a lot of folks
| that is enough.
|
| Additionally, I don't really see the issue with selling (NOT
| licensing) something up-front, if there is a culture of
| setting pricing to be reasonable and fair instead of the
| current leave-no-money-on-the-table approach.
|
| Those that want to earn above and beyond can still find
| employment in critical services...banking, healthcare,
| government, whatever, while those that want to opt out of
| employment are free to do so on their terms.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The need to earn money incentivizes people to work on
| things that are useful to others. If people only followed
| their passion, and the results of that are of no interest
| to others, why should others pay them to do that?
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| The need to earn money also incentivizes people to work
| on products that are monetiziable. More specifically, it
| encourages people to move their project in a monetiziable
| direction which puts the priority on revenue generation
| over quality.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > which puts the priority on revenue generation over
| quality.
|
| On the other hand, the need to be able to sell things
| means the quality has to meet the customer's
| expectations.
|
| For example, cars produced by free market companies _far_
| exceed in quality those produced by socialist operations.
|
| In fact, I suspect you'd be hard pressed to find any
| examples of anything people made purely for their own
| amusement being better quality than items they made for
| sale.
|
| For example, the software I write for my own personal use
| tends to be pretty slipshod, as it only has to work for
| my use case. I don't bother with coherent error messages,
| documentation, a decent user interface, or fixing any
| bugs that don't directly impede what I use it for. Doing
| that stuff is simply _not worth my time_ unless I 'm
| planning on distributing it.
| leepowers wrote:
| Does it though? It seems instead the incentive might be
| to create broad and accessible works that will appeal to
| the widest audience. Marvel movies are produced and
| performed with a high level of quality; yet the stories
| are simple, unchallenging, and easily accessible.
|
| It's also possible to create content that's more
| experimental and creative, by focusing on more niche
| audiences. This is evidenced by the current golden age of
| TV and streaming, with a wide variety of dramas,
| comedies, documentaries, etc.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I like the way CirclesUBI handles it. If you appreciate a
| craftsman's work you can "trust" them. Trust is a pact to
| value their UBI tokens as much as you value your own.
|
| So you don't have be in the market for a font to support
| fontmakers (or anything else).
| [deleted]
| meltedcapacitor wrote:
| What do we need an incentive for? The world isn't exactly
| short of art and lot of people will keep doing it for fame
| and glory or for its own sake.
|
| Fewer commercial incentives may improve what bubbles up as
| the incentive process is sometimes interfering badly with the
| discovery, or production, of the best stuff.
| leepowers wrote:
| Sharing freely and embracing open source has been an unalloyed
| good for encouraging the development of software; so there is
| some insight to your comment. But participation in open source
| is voluntary. And right now any artist or musician can make the
| voluntary and free decision release their work under a Creative
| Commons license. It would be a degradation of individual
| liberty to require all workers in all creative fields to open
| source their work. That's not a choice you, or me, or the
| government should get to make on behalf of another person.
|
| One might argue that some regime of publicly funded
| remuneration could be just compensation for the public seizure
| of all creative output. But that's orthogonal to the point. The
| seizure itself is the problem.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| My issue is more that an individual work can't stand alone,
| in a legal sense. There is always the work, and then there is
| a an artificially-imposed, invisible framework around it that
| prohibits the free use of the work it supposedly protects.
|
| I wouldn't describe it as public "seizure", more the omission
| of that previously-mentioned framework which in-turn allows
| the work itself to be free of encumbrance.
|
| Does a U.S. government worker creating something public
| domain experience a "seizure" of his work? I don't think so.
| And in fact the government functions quite well with this
| rule in-place. Why can't we consider extending that to the
| private sector as well?
|
| There is the old adage of, "information wants to be free". In
| a way, so does everything else.
|
| But particularly in the digital domain -- which economically
| can be described as a land of plenty, where information can
| be freely copied, transformed, and executed with little-to-
| no-cost -- we should embrace this new economy rather than
| trying to force physical-world constraints where they don't
| belong.
| throwthere wrote:
| Lol what? So musicians shouldn't get value when people play
| their music? I guess you'd have them starve? Same with all the
| others?
| ramblenode wrote:
| Most musicians are not making their money from copyright but
| from performances. Only a tiny % of musicians ever get a
| record deal. Of those with record deals, the vast majority of
| the earnings goes to the record label and not the artist.
|
| Earnings from copyrighted musical works probably follows a
| pareto distribution--something like 90% of earnings are
| accrued by <10% of copyright holders. So the copyright regime
| rewards, in order, 1. music distributors, 2. big name
| artists, and finally 3. most other artists who receive only
| token earnings.
|
| Music was an idyllic vocation before records and long before
| copyright. There are many ways to support the arts other than
| copyright. Grants for public theatres, music education, and
| street venues would be more egalitarian and benefit more
| musicians than a copyright regime.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Look at all these terrible attempts at controlling, and just
| how well they work. In every sector you have a cadre of
| elites and a much larger cohort of have-nots.
|
| Musicians don't _starve_ , they put on concerts and
| experiences and sell merchandise. In many ways music has
| already given up ownership of the music itself, because they
| let Spotify/Apple Music/et al eat their lunch. Fractions of a
| penny per-play is like nothing for 99% of musicians.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| No. Musicians should get value when _they_ play their music
| to a person or audience willing to pay. If they are starving
| they should find another job.
| wccrawford wrote:
| That would mean that there's no value in _creating_ the
| music. Only in reproducing it. People would have even less
| incentive to create new stuff instead of redoing old stuff.
| That is definitely not what I, as a listener, want.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| There already exist multiple lifetimes of existing music.
| The world won't be worse off if that rate of growth
| slowed down significantly.
| ramblenode wrote:
| Most musicians don't make music for its monetary value,
| but because of personal fulfillment. All but the most
| successful 1% of musicians would find greater monetary
| value doing something else for the amount of work it
| takes to get to that level.
|
| > People would have even less incentive to create new
| stuff instead of redoing old stuff.
|
| In fact, I speculate the opposite might be true. How many
| big pop artists go into semi-retirement by their mid-30s
| once they've dropped off the charts? Why keep making
| music when you can comfortably collect off all your past
| hits? Certainly there's no economic incentive to keep
| working once you can collect sizeable rents.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Except that people create music _all the time_ despite
| their knowledge that they won 't get paid for it.
|
| There will also always be a paying market for composing,
| say, the soundtrack to a movie where it has to reflect
| the narrative and events in the film. For example, the
| Bugs Bunny cartoon music was performed while projecting
| the cartoon on a screen, so the musicians could match the
| timing. The music was very much customized to the
| cartoon.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > So musicians shouldn't get value when people play their
| music?
|
| People will pay $$$$$ to hear the original Beatles give a
| live performance. They will pay $ to hear a cover band play
| the same music, even if the cover band is better.
|
| Reframe the issue as recorded music being _advertising_ for
| the live concert performance, where the money will be made.
| Many bands have already figured that out that 's where the
| real money is these days.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > People will pay $$$$$ to hear the original Beatles give a
| live performance. They will pay $ to hear a cover band play
| the same music, even if the cover band is better.
|
| The novelty of having musicians rise from the dead for a
| concert _does_ help there.
| fimdomeio wrote:
| One thing that baffles me in the last webfonts i've used is that
| in the install instructions the css has some @import tracking
| line and an explanation that the font does not work without that
| line, which is a plain lie. If i already have some troubles
| understanding charging by page views, trying to force my users to
| be tracked by them is just crazy.
| omnimus wrote:
| I think you overestimate how technical most of these type
| foundries are. The industry is basically few huge corporations
| like Monotype, Adobe, Google Fonts and then 100s of tiny
| independent 1-5 person companies. These are no web engineers
| and mostly are just somehow trying to figure out how to
| survive. I wouldn't think there's much malice behind it... more
| like incompetence. Most of webfonts sales are delivered just as
| .woff files to be selfhosted.
|
| Probably also reason why people use them because Google Fonts
| exists specifically to track people.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| If you're in the business of font making, then I'm sorry about
| this, but... Which of these would be better for the vast
| majority?
|
| - We remove IP concerns from fonts entirely. All existing fonts
| are free to use however you want, but there are no incentives to
| commercially produce more fonts.
|
| - We find a better way for people to continue to have to think
| about whether they're allowed to use a given font instead of
| focusing more fully on what they want to communicate.
|
| It's the role of economics to address problems caused by
| scarcity. But are fonts scarce? Are they scarcer than the
| attention required to use them? When do we say, "good job, that's
| enough fonts" and move on?
|
| Or do we really need to reserve a fraction of the global
| mindshare for font design in perpituity? I'm happy to be
| convinced of this, it's just that I don't see it from here.
| myself248 wrote:
| Imagine if we had a National Endowment for the Fonts. A chunk
| of cash set aside, and every year a panel reviews all the fonts
| that've been created that year, and divides up that cash
| accordingly.
|
| And then, save for the ability to claim credit for creating a
| font within one year of the font's creation, we remove all
| intellectual property protections from all fonts forever.
|
| The size of the industry creating fonts would scale to whatever
| the size of the kitty can sustain. Some hobbyists would find
| themselves surprisingly rewarded for their work. Nobody would
| have to track or license anything.
| cortesoft wrote:
| How about we skip the panel?
|
| We set aside the money, and then do some analysis of how
| popular fonts are (based on web traffic and which fonts are
| in use), and then divide up the pool of money to reward
| people based on how popular the font is?
|
| This has the dual purpose of keeping a market based
| allocation but also prevents having to rely on artificial
| scarcity.
| myself248 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that's how races-to-the-bottom get
| incentivized, but yeah, I'm sure popularity would be one
| metric considered by the panel. It does mean something, I
| just don't think it's the only figure of merit.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| If it meant not having to worry about whose toes I'm stepping
| on while I communicate, I'd totally put money into that pile.
|
| It seems similar to the retroactive public goods DAO that the
| Ethereum people are working on
| raverbashing wrote:
| Good fonts are scarse. Fonts that are built with a specific
| purpose are scarse.
|
| Fonts evolve because design evolves. Helvetica is nice but
| boring and it doesn't fit all cases.
|
| Of course there's a discussion to be had if licensing is the
| best model or something like the Patreon model makes more sense
| for fonts.
|
| If you think all you need is Arial and Times New Roman then
| good for you.
| tptacek wrote:
| I think it's revealing that message board people are so quick
| to extend arguments against intellectual property to typefaces.
| It's hard to think of something that people "need" less than a
| proprietary font; there are thousands of free ones, and there
| is no utility benefit to any of the non-free ones. It's hard to
| see a motivation for "liberating" them beyond spite.
| post-it wrote:
| I think intellectual property is awful in every form. With
| real property, if someone takes it then you haven't got it
| anymore, so it makes sense to protect it. But you can't take
| intellectual property away from its owner.
|
| I understand _why_ it exists: intellectual property creation
| is a full-time occupation and the creators need to eat. But
| that just makes it an awful but necessary stopgap until we
| figure out a better way to feed everyone.
| hakfoo wrote:
| Perhaps they are an easy target because they are
| "unnecessary". They add some, very minor value, but tend to
| ask for very high prices and inflexible terms (think of web-
| fonts with per-pageview restrictions), so there are few
| friends for the font designer community.
|
| I suspect we'd also see bespoke development of fonts as a
| branding initiative, even in a post-IP world. Think how Gill
| Sans is instantly recognized as "the London Underground font"
| even for people who've never been there. You know every major
| brand in the world would like to elevate themselves to that
| degree of cultural permanence.
| danShumway wrote:
| I think you and GP are in some ways saying the same thing.
|
| > But are fonts scarce? Are they scarcer than the attention
| required to use them? When do we say, "good job, that's
| enough fonts" and move on?
|
| You disagree about the idea of removing IP protections from
| fonts, but beyond that you seem to agree that Libre font
| collections may basically be Good Enough(tm) and that there
| might not be much of a need or justification to waste time
| thinking about the proprietary/commercial market at all.
|
| I do generally disagree with both ideas, I think people are a
| little too quick to dismiss the creative and functional value
| of new fonts, and I think that typography as a skill is
| generally undervalued in technical circles. But that
| disagreement aside, I didn't read GP's post as an argument
| that there's a pressing need to liberate fonts, just that to
| them it's not clear what copyright is even protecting here in
| the first place, given how little (again, to them) functional
| value that proprietary fonts provide.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| When I look at pictures of very old documents I can see
| that 1800's font preferences are different than 2000's font
| preferences. Now that fonts are digital and can be shared
| in an instant, instead of pieces of metal, do you think the
| preference drift will persist?
|
| I wasn't so much trying to downplay the value of typography
| outright, but rather downplay the marginal value of 2022
| typography over 2021 typography.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| What does it reveal? That we're spiteful about having to
| submit to an "are you allowed to use this?" interrogation
| process every time we publish something, whether or not we
| used something proprietary in it?
|
| 'cause yeah, I kinda am.
|
| The cost of compliance while not using proprietary fonts is
| the same as the cost of compliance while using them. The
| "just don't use them"-strategy fails to free up the
| efficiency that they're bogging down. Sure, it's not a big
| deal, you can look into the project and find the font and
| hope you put something helpful in the commit where you
| included it and send an email to legal--or whatever the hoops
| are for your particular case. But it's one of a million tiny
| third party concerns that are getting between you and your
| ability to give your user a good experience.
| throwthere wrote:
| I'm sorry but I don't follow you. Isn't it stupid easy to
| get plenty of high quality fonts licensed for free at
| somewhere like Google fonts. If you need something else
| specific shouldn't the creators be entitled to license
| their work? Why should you be entitled to their works?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I have no interest in using proprietary fonts.
|
| What I'm saying is that if I'm working on a project that
| includes a font somewhere and somebody points at some
| text and says "what is that font and are you allowed to
| use it?" I have to dig through the code and find the font
| and research its licensing whether or not it's
| proprietary.
|
| So long as the expectation is that we all must be able to
| prove that we're allowed to use the fonts that we're
| using, a proprietary font anywhere is a drag on
| productivity everywhere.
| ordiel wrote:
| A very simplified comment...
|
| Use the freaking font, pay none for it due to how such
| complexities for it are managed, wait for the font owner to find
| your site and try to do some legal paperwork against you and then
| see how all of that legal stuff is just not useful in whichever
| conuntry you are actually on...
| graupel wrote:
| I just purchased $12,000 worth of fonts and it nearly broke me
| (mentally) in terms of how to do it the right way across web,
| desktop and app. The system truly is broken in every regard.
| superfamicom wrote:
| I love typography but decided to follow the trend of removing
| custom fonts from my websites as the value add is actually very,
| very low. A lot can be achieved with some simple letter spacing
| and line height, as well as antialiasing correctly. I looked into
| paying for nice custom typefaces but the cost is too much.
|
| I have been using the same open source typeface for programming
| since I found it many, many years ago. The industry reminds me of
| music licensing, there are so many free choices that are public
| domain, but if you have the money you flex and spend it on
| something custom, even if it is more or less the same as the free
| option, because that distinction is made by the end users. It
| reminds me of 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' using public
| domain music for many of the scenes and the theme, and now I hear
| that tune in many TV shows.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Please don't fix fonts with letter spacing and other hacks.
| Fonts are engineered with specific fitting (even before kerning
| pairs are added) and this would just make things worse.
|
| You can however continue to use open source fonts! There is
| nothing wrong with that. There are many amazing free fonts out
| there that compete with commercial alternatives.
|
| But to say that Fonts don't add any value is preposterous.
| superfamicom wrote:
| I didn't mention fixing anywhere. Having spent a portion of
| my career as a graphic designer, letter spacing / kerning was
| used in literally every print piece I ever made, so to
| suggest they are to be used as provided is preposterous.
| robocat wrote:
| You just reminded me of https://type.method.ac/ where
| everyone can quickly check their font kerning skills
| against a standard. Fun for us developers!
| cxr wrote:
| I think the author is probably mistaken in their understanding of
| something here.
|
| Foundries don't license fonts for "desktop use" on seemingly
| generous terms out of the goodness of their hearts. It's because
| they have no choice. Letterforms are not copyrightable. The font
| _file_ +, however, is. Once a typeset character sequence is
| printed or rasterized and flashed on the screen, any license that
| a foundry cooks up trying to control that use would be
| unenforceable. The only leverage they have is controlling the
| distribution of the file. As it turns out, due to the way Web
| fonts work, this means they do have leverage on the Web--for
| technical reasons.
|
| If the foundries had a choice, they wouldn't opt to license Web
| fonts more generously, they'd opt to extract more money out of
| the traditional uses.
|
| (Note that this is written from the perspective of the way that
| copyright works in the US.)
|
| + EDIT: I realized just now while brushing my teeth that this
| might lead to further mistaken understanding when put this way.
| So pretend instead that I said something like "what's in the font
| file", and pay particular attention to
| <https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23>.
| thayne wrote:
| Fonts can also be protected by design patents, although I'm not
| sure how common that is.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| So if I rasterise webfonts in a service I only have to pay once
| not per use? This sounds incorrect.
| [deleted]
| pavlov wrote:
| Webfonts are not licensed for server-side use at all, so
| you're not allowed to do this.
| hapidjus wrote:
| What if you do it on you desktop?
| [deleted]
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| The law sees in color, not black and white. If your beige
| tower desktop computer is talking to users on the
| Internet, a court can decide you should have used server
| licensing.
| cxr wrote:
| This is the right principle to have absorbed from the
| article linked, but applied incorrectly.
|
| For either of the hypotheticals here, it would be
| possible to operate in the way described, subject to some
| constraints. There is no reason to think that the courts
| would perceive any legal imperative to recognize the
| distinction between server licenses or otherwise on
| copyright grounds. Companies can't invent law and say
| that it applies just because they wrote down how they'd
| like for things to work.
|
| The technical reasons referenced earlier are what make
| these hypotheticals untenable, not law.
| yuubi wrote:
| I read the question as "what if the designer uses
| designer tools to make a PNG with text instead of HTML
| that calls for a fancy font, then posts that?" It seems
| like that should (in the US) work like any normal use of
| a font on a designer's pc^Wmac, and the image doesn't get
| copyright-like encumbrances from the font.
| hapidjus wrote:
| Exactly. I should have been more clear.
| minty_phoenix wrote:
| Server use is typically its own license category. At the
| company I worked for, their server licensing was based on
| number of server CPUs (technically only those actually
| used by the service using the font) and was valid for a
| year meaning you'd have to re-up annually.
| pavlov wrote:
| I don't understand why your comment is downvoted because
| it's absolutely correct (for most type foundries anyway).
| 2bitlobster wrote:
| Some interesting notes: professional font designers regularly
| copy each other's work. However, if you ask a legitimate font
| designer, they will _trace_ another font. Where they get in hot
| water is if they copy and /or manipulate the actual Bezier
| points from another file (at which point they are copying the
| code). I remember going to a font design conference a long time
| ago, and some elite well known designers were aghast at another
| well known font designer for copying the bezier points directly
| off of another font and then manipulating the points from
| there. It's a crazy little dance they do to keep things legit.
| randombits0 wrote:
| I'd like to suggest that if a "crazy little dance" is
| required to "keep things legit", it's not.
| comex wrote:
| > Once a typeset character sequence is printed or rasterized
| and flashed on the screen, any license that a foundry cooks up
| trying to control that use would be unenforceable.
|
| That's not true. Distributing letterforms wouldn't be a
| _copyright_ violation. But if the font distributor shows the
| buyer some text and requires them to click "I Agree" before
| downloading the font, then they have a valid contract, which
| can impose whatever obligations they want, including usage
| restrictions.
|
| Note that copyright licenses may not always be contracts, in
| cases where the recipient _doesn 't_ explicitly agree to them.
| Notably, the GPL is designed to work without needing agreement.
| From the GPLv2's text:
|
| > You are not required to accept this License, since you have
| not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to
| modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works.
|
| Though, the GPL has been enforced in the US as a contract
| anyway. [1]
|
| But license agreements which you have to explicitly agree to
| are unquestionably contracts and enforceable as such.
|
| Contracts _are_ somewhat more difficult to enforce than
| copyright. You can usually only recover actual damages rather
| than statutory or punitive damages, and you can 't use the DMCA
| as a shortcut to enforcement before going to court. But that's
| far from saying they're not enforceable at all.
|
| [1]
| https://www.theregister.com/2017/05/13/gnu_gpl_enforceable_c...
| cxr wrote:
| Saying flatly "that's not true" is too bold. I don't have a
| responsibility to answer for what you think I'm arguing, only
| what I'm actually arguing. (And equivocating on my words
| doesn't change that.)
|
| > if the font distributor shows the buyer some text and
| requires them to click "I Agree" before downloading the font,
| then they have a valid contract
|
| Right. But if they don't agree, then no legal mechanism
| exists to keep the "customer" from getting those shapes from
| someone who doesn't impose a contract, since anyone can
| peddle the same letterforms without violating copyright.
| comex wrote:
| > But if they don't agree, then no legal mechanism exists
| to keep the "customer" from getting those shapes from
| someone who doesn't impose a contract, since anyone can
| peddle the same letterforms without violating copyright.
|
| Sure, if you clone the font. But if you clone the font you
| can also distribute the clone as a web font. What's the
| difference?
| cxr wrote:
| > if you clone the font
|
| Even without. Many use cases in print and other
| traditional, non-Web media exist where a clone wouldn't
| be required, because the end result is "flat", and you're
| not dealing in live text objects, unlike on the Web.
| You're shooting a fixed target. For example, it doesn't
| matter whether you reproduce a font's "fi" and "ff"
| ligatures if the blurb or logotype you're working on
| doesn't have those sequences. Worst case scenario, a
| person can get by with brute force--tracing the
| letterforms that they need. It's not as the operations to
| do that is any different from the kinds of edits they're
| already doing, anyway.
| kjrose wrote:
| I did not know this. It makes a whole lot of sense and is
| totally reasonable. Does this mean that a graphics designer who
| buys a font can just use it at will without royalties as long
| as they don't distribute the file?
| zinekeller wrote:
| Yes. That's why there are some knock-off fonts that is fully
| legal in the United States (apart from the name, but that's
| trademarks).
|
| Note: US law (for rather obvious reasons). Europe (depending
| on the country) has either a design trademark or a design
| copyright available, which means that foundries can (in
| theory) control their use there (in practice, uniform
| worldwide licensing means they go for the lowest common
| denominator). Asian (mainly East Asian) IP laws does have a
| nuance, which means that whether a design is copyrightable
| depends if the purpose of the said design is utilitarian or
| artistic.
| omnimus wrote:
| Yes but it's complicated because everybody knows the value is
| in the shapes and it's gray area... many bigger agencies will
| ask for special licenses just to be sure. Especially if it's
| a logotype where font might be majority of value.
| koboll wrote:
| In particular, there are plenty of examples of companies
| putting out bounties to rogue employees who provide
| evidence that a business is using unlicensed software, so
| it's dangerous even if you can't prove through the output
| of the software alone that it is unlicensed.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| How big is the market for fonts? Is there a reason for this or is
| it mostly just the market being dumb?
| cmelbye wrote:
| Everyone uses fonts, of course, and they're an important factor
| in how people perceive a brand. A lot of work goes into the
| subtleties that people don't necessarily notice but will
| definitely "feel."
|
| Companies might start out paying these "off the shelf" prices,
| but everything in life is negotiable and they'll eventually
| work out a better deal. However, now the company has tied their
| brand identity to a typeface that is being licensed to them
| with a variable cost. So eventually, they may commission a
| custom typeface which could offer the potential of full
| ownership without perpetual fees.
| Wistar wrote:
| In 2014, when I was working on post-production for a TV ad, the
| producer wanted to use a typeface, Typotheque's Tribute Tribunal
| Std Bold, until he found out that the "broadcast and film"
| license fee for a single year of on-air use in North America was
| $17,465.
| boondaburrah wrote:
| One thing that grinds my gears is that ebook font licensing is
| somehow separate from pdf font licensing and on a per title
| basis, despite them being /the same thing/.
|
| Similarly, application embed licensing and webfont licensing are
| separate, which kinda makes sense, until you make a webapp. (In
| reality though, I believe the spirit of the distinction is
| whether the user of the app can enter any text and have it appear
| in that font, but they don't say that.)
| Shorel wrote:
| Ha ha ha ha.
|
| I put the New York Times font in my PocketBook eReader.
|
| Its name is "FB Web Use Only".
|
| I don't care.
| Rd6n6 wrote:
| All the webfonts I've ever seen have a variation of this clause,
| which I think unintentionally makes them unusable on the web for
| their stated purposes. Do they think that @font-face prevents
| downloads? Anybody can just right click in the network tab iirc
|
| > The Licensee may use the Licensed Webfont(s) only on the web,
| for styling Websites, using the @font-face selector in CSS files,
| subject to the following restrictions: > 1. The Licensee may not
| link to, nor put online, any version of the font downloadable and
| installable by any third party
| chairmanwow1 wrote:
| People gotta get paid, but I don't understand why their aren't
| competing models in the market?
|
| Anyone have any insight into why this is the case?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why compete when you can do the exact same model and roll in
| the cash yourself? Business people hate leaving money on the
| table.
| omnimus wrote:
| The market evolved into this state. Traditionally fonts were
| licensed as as software licenses per machine. It was not great
| but it was a standard. With web there was more opportunity to
| change price based on impressions. But for big projects -
| logos, tv ads etc. you almost always need a special license.
|
| The problem is to make fonts cheap for solo designer doing
| local prints where 60usd is a lot vs designer in agency doing
| multi national ad where 3000usd is drop in budget.
|
| There are competing models in the market. As print slowly
| disappears most foundries are pricing on amount of web visits,
| app downloads and social media followers. Some progressive ones
| are even moving to pricing based on size of company / number of
| employees like Dinamo https://abcdinamo.com/news/about-our-
| pricing. There is also Fontstand https://fontstand.com/ thats
| "reting" of fonts but that's again mostly for small desktop
| publishers.
| blihp wrote:
| See the comment re: copyright issues. Here in the U.S. the
| First Amendment severely limits what one can and can't do
| regarding font licensing. Restricting what one can and can't do
| with a (rasterized, at least) font has historically been
| interpreted as limiting speech. As a result, it's generally not
| possible to do the typical software licensing thing and say
| 'you can do this and this but not that' as the First Amendment
| will steamroll much of what one tries to put in the license.
| dhosek wrote:
| Nope nope nope.
|
| The first amendment has nothing to do with it. A big part of
| it is that type design was largely a European activity until
| the late nineteenth century/early twentieth century. American
| typefounders lived off copied designs (and even as America
| gave birth to Linn Boyd Benton, Bruce Rogers and Frederic
| Goudy, there was still a lot of stealing happening at the big
| American foundries (the innovation happening in the US tended
| to be more technical than artistic. American Monotype has
| approximately zero noteworthy typefaces created under its
| auspices, while its English counterpart had a long streak of
| notable designs released in the first half of the twentieth
| century which are responsible for the look of modern book
| typography).
|
| This history of stealing designs for competitive reasons was
| a bit part of why there was resistance on the part of the big
| players in the industry to seriously pushing for typeface
| design protection. While Bitstream had Matthew Carter
| designing excellent faces for them (and overseeing licensed
| designs from ITC), the vast majority of their type designs
| (all the ones named style + number), were slavish clones of
| other companies' designs. The big companies make the bulk of
| their typeface income not from retail sales but from
| licensing deals (e.g., Apple and Microsoft made licensing
| deals with Adobe and Monotype respectively for most of their
| system fonts, although some smaller design houses like
| Hoefler & Co., Bigelow & Holmes and Tiro Typeworks (off the
| type of my head) have managed to get some of that licensing.
| The late Arthur Baker made the biggest part of his lifetime
| income from a licensing deal with HP.
| JustFinishedBSG wrote:
| Completely agree.
|
| Personally, I've decided not to buy a font anymore if it doesn't
| have a "Universal" license that encompasses all uses at once.
|
| I want to be able to use the font however I see fit and not feel
| FOMO'd in buying a Desktop+Web license because what if I ever
| want to use it on the web might as well get the discount now.
| Wait now I can't use it in an app ! Damn.
|
| Example: DJR licensing is awesome [1]
|
| [1] https://djr.com/license
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| Also worth mentioning: https://mbtype.com/ by Matthew Butterick
| of practicaltypography.com fame offers a really permissive
| license for his fonts: https://mbtype.com/license/ .
| [deleted]
| rocqua wrote:
| It looks to me like their licenses still have limits on monthly
| page-views. Not an option of "I get to use the font whenenver I
| want wherever I want".
| JustFinishedBSG wrote:
| True, but that's the best compromise to me next to open-
| source / ofl fonts (because let's not forget that fonts are
| _software_ ).
|
| I'm OK with paying for a level of use as long as it's
| generous and I'm not limited completely arbitrarily.
|
| You'd be surprised by the number of foundries that explicitly
| forbid sub setting of the fonts (because that makes you an
| evil hacker I guess?), so you're not allowed to only use
| Latin on your website, gotta load the whole fucking thing.
| The font has weird kerning and you want to fix it? Yeah, not
| sorry not allowed either.
|
| The restrictions in font licenses are completely ridiculous.
| netr0ute wrote:
| On my website, I can't measure exactly how many page views
| there are because there are no tracking scripts or other
| ways to discern between bots and humans. That means any
| font that has a page view limitation is a complete non-
| starter for me. Therefore, it seems like OFL is the only
| "reasonable" option other than an unlimited font license.
| JustFinishedBSG wrote:
| Fortunately page views are based on the honor system. So
| you _can_ use the fonts as long as its in good faith ...
|
| But there are so many good OFL or free fonts nowadays
| that it's not a problem anyway.
| netr0ute wrote:
| What happens if my website gets really popular and
| nobody's there checking the analytics? Then that's a
| problem unless it's perpetually babysat all because of a
| font.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The font designer certainly isn't checking your analytics
| if you aren't. I assume that's the reason for the honor
| system.
| [deleted]
| phkahler wrote:
| I wish web sites would stop using custom fonts. It's a waste of
| bandwidth.
| indymike wrote:
| If I'm honest with myself, when I get mad at font licensing it is
| because there is a great mismatch between my budget and the font
| publisher's price list.
| pdimitar wrote:
| Calling out for the common folk or small business to pay for the
| fonts they used is doomed to fail. (Not saying the article does
| that, just pointing it out.) Calling out to fight insane legal
| practices is even less likely to ever succeed as well.
|
| IMO a good solution to both licensing plus compensating the hard-
| working people who make fonts would be:
|
| 1. Integrate those fonts in the mainstream browsers;
|
| 2. Have the browser vendors pay a flat fee to the font creators,
| annually. I think something like $20_000 per font per year is
| quite fair and definitely won't even register in the balance
| sheets of Google, Apple and Mozilla.
|
| There's no way this whole thing can be solved by making small
| customers pay. Even if some do most will not so such a business
| strategy simply doesn't scale. Even if I make $10_000 a month
| from a small business of mine I'd still not consider paying
| something like $500 for a font unless I am sure I am going to use
| it for 4-5 years. In my eyes it's an insanely high cost for just
| one tiny part of my online business.
|
| But one thing I don't know and would love to learn more about is
| this: are the professional fonts usually paid per month or only
| once for a lifetime? If the latter then I guess many smaller
| business could still bear the cost.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Let's not bake anymore things in a browser.
|
| There are too many typefaces. I don't want to rely on the
| browser to integrate a work of art that I created.
|
| The way it is, the current situation, allows the typographer to
| sell directly to consumers and select appropriate license.
| Whether that's expensive or too restrictive is besides the
| point. There is a plethora of cheap fonts.
|
| Not only would your idea kill creativity and bring font
| development to a standstill, it would put too much power in the
| hands of browsers which are already too powerful.
| lmeyerov wrote:
| Yep I remember backing FontAwesome's initial Kickstarter and, as
| they grew and evolved, emailing for licensing for basic on-prem /
| OEM / content editor use, and it was clear the modern web folks
| like them didn't have a way to sustain anything beyond their saas
| flow.
|
| As with the rest of OSS, big companies are starting to release
| their own equivalents as they need these kinds of use cases. So
| it's near-term right of FA for sustainable or more profitable
| growth to do their model, but long-term a big existential risk.
| Was frustrating as someone explicitly and demonstrably ready to
| pay and valuing ISVs thriving here and being forced to go the
| bigco oss way.
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