Re:Font licensing is ill, please help heal it
by comex on Friday September 03, 2021 @04:10PM
(#28408804)
> 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?
Re:Font licensing is ill, please help heal it
by cxr on Friday September 03, 2021 @04:55PM
(#28409317)
> 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.
> 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.