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Font Company Wielding DMCA Against Bit-Flipping
Roundeye writes: "Seems that AGFA Monotype is trying to stop Tom Murphy from distributing his embed tool. According to the lawyers, the pair of bits in a TrueType font which specify how a font should be embedded constitute a DMCA-worthy access control device. Tom's standing up to them because, 'Embedding bits do nothing to keep consumers from copying fonts' and 'Since the enactment of the DMCA, I have only ever run embed on fonts for which I own the copyright." He's even got his own haiku version of the software..."
This raises a great point about the DCMA. If I have a company that produces a tool to help me create products I am ok. Now, if my tool is used by others to circumvent what they call protection am I liable?
2 .h tm
In this case preventing someone from embedding a font doesn't protect the font. The font can easily be included with the document. This is nuts.
The embedding bits were orginally designed to make things easier for people to *distribute* fonts, not impede the distribution.
Check out this from Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/embed/embed
The best quote:
"Most foundries and type designers set the embedding level of their fonts to Editable embedding allowed or Print & Preview embedding allowed. However, a few foundries set the embedding level to No embedding allowed. If you feel that embedding technology has a place within your organization, be sure to ask the type vendor about it before you part with any money."
Anyway, in case you're curious, I've been pushing their buttons a little bit, with the help of Dave Touretzky , and my current guess is that they have given up on me. (I haven't heard back since the letter I sent them that's on that page.) But I will be happy to go to court over this retarded case, and the EFF has informally offered to help if I do. ( Donate! )
In case you're interested, my fonts, which I've been making since 1993 (and which are free for you to use for practically anything) are at fonts.tom7.com .
It's public domain. He obviously doesn't mind
/* location for checksum */ ; ; ; ; /* write checksum */
/*
* This program is for setting TTF files to Installable Embedding mode.
*
* Note that using this to embed fonts which you are not licensed to embed
* does not make it legal.
*
* This code was written by Tom Murphy 7, and is public domain. Use at your
* own risk...
*/
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
void fatal();
int main (int argc, char**argv) {
FILE * inways;
if (argc != 2)
printf("Usage: %s font.ttf\n\nPublic Domain software by Tom 7. Use at your own risk.\n",argv[0]);
else if (inways = fopen(argv[1],"rb+")) {
int a,x;
char type[5];
type[4]=0;
fseek(inways,12,0);
for (;;) {
for (x=0;x<4;x++) if (EOF == (type[x] = getc(inways))) fatal();
if (!strcmp(type,"OS/2")) {
int length;
unsigned long loc, fstype, sum=0;
loc=ftell(inways);
for (x=4;x--;) if (EOF == getc(inways)) fatal();
fstype = fgetc(inways) << 24;
fstype |= fgetc(inways) << 16;
fstype |= fgetc(inways) << 8
fstype |= fgetc(inways)
length = fgetc(inways) << 24;
length |= fgetc(inways) << 16;
length |= fgetc(inways) << 8
length |= fgetc(inways)
/* printf("fstype: %d length: %d\n",fstype,length);*/
if (fseek(inways,fstype+8,0)) fatal();
fputc(0,inways);
fputc(0,inways);
fseek(inways,fstype,0);
for (x=length;x--;)
sum += fgetc(inways);
fseek(inways,loc,0);
fputc(sum>>24,inways);
fputc(255&(sum>>16),inways);
fputc(255&(sum>>8), inways);
fputc(255&sum , inways);
fclose(inways);
exit(0);
}
for (x=12;x--;) if (EOF == getc(inways)) fatal();
}
} else
printf("I wasn't able to open the file %s.\n", argv[1]);
}
void fatal() { fprintf(stderr,"Malformed TTF file.\n");
exit(-1); }
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
You obviously don't work in the design field do you?
Fonts aren't "freely distributed" in most cases. Fonts usually do accompany a piece sent to the printer to ensure the printer can reproduce the typeface in the design. But the printer must remove the fonts from their system if they do not have rights to them. Fonts you see in print are nearly always copyrighted due to the demanding nature of making a good, legible and proper typeface.
Check out this book.
Did you read my response?
In order for embed to be covered by the DMCA, the program has to be primarily designed for circumvention. Circumvention only occurs when the act is without the authority of the copyright holder. In this case, I am the copyright holder, so of course I grant myself authority to modify the bits!
(There are several other reasons why their argument doesn't hold that I give, but this is the strongest...) I think their legal argument is faulty.
Contribute to the EFF [eff.org]
Write the Politicians [congress.org]
If a decent percent of the hundreds of thousands of people who read slashdot acutally did these things, we might actually make a difference.
Here's an interesting tidbit. .)
As it turns out, fonts cannot be copyrighted in the US. Only the truetype "programs" that generate them can. (See comp.fonts FAQ
Therefore, it would almost certainly be legal to write a program that takes copyrighted truetype "programs" as input, and produces equivalent programs (that is, they generate the same typeface) that are not copyrighted. It would also need to change the names to avoid trademark infringement. If I did this, and also changed the embedding bit, would that not put me in the clear of any possible DMCA claim?
I recommend writing the following persons to voice your complete disgust at AGFA Monotype for their lawyers using such tactics against Mr. Tom Murphy.
e .com
e .com
Robert Givens
President of Agfa Monotype
robert.givens@agfamonotype.com
Ira Mirochnick
Senior Vice-President
ira.mirochnick@agfamonotype.com
Steve Kuhlman
VP Sales & Marketing
steve.kuhlman@agfamonotype.com
Mark Larson
Marketing and Public Relations
Agfa Monotype Corporation
985 Busse Road
Elk Grove, IL 60007-2400
847-718-0400
mark.larson@agfamonotyp
Vikki Quick
OEM Product Marketing Manager
Agfa Monotype Corporation
200 Ballardvale Street
Wilmington, MA 01887-1069
978.284.5926
vikki.quick@agfamonotyp
If Tom wants to make his fonts freely available to others, and uses his software to toggle bits on his fonts, fine.
But, it clear from comments here that at least some people are using the program to illegally embeed fonts in documents, such as PDFs. And yes, this is illegal. Embeed fonts are a good thing, I like them, but only if I own them and the redistribution rights or can freely do so. This is why default system fonts are so often used for such documents. So that the fonts can be freely passed around.
Like any other piece of software, font design and typograph requires work to create. And its not drudge labor either, it takes both skill and creative ability. Commerical font houses pay people to create these, and then sell their work. Usually, such fonts are licenses so that people can use them to print paper documents, or view other documents on systems where the owners have also licensed the font. Don't have the font? Buy it or go read something else.
Using a propitary font on a website, and redistributing it to people looking at your site is piracy, clear and simple. No ifs, ands, or buts.
The font industry has adopted a very reasonable approach till now. No heavy handed DRM, just a couple of bits and the trust that software will honor them. This is convient for consumers and protects the people who work to create the things we use.
The DMCA might not be entirely appropriate here, and perhaps the case should be tossed on technicalities. But whatever the non-infringing uses and the authors own utility for the program, the people on slashdot have made it clear that the non-infringing use is pretty marginal to the illegal one.
A shame. Perhaps the author should look at writting a font editor of his own. One that defaults to free access for new fonts, and allow increasing security, but not granting new permissions on commercial fonts. This is a fair method of handling the problem, one that appears to have previously been used successfully without resorting to more draconian copyright protections.
Jason Denton Colorado State University [Thoughs and comments are my own, and not reflective of CSU]
comp.fonts FAQ: Are fonts copyrightable?
Looks to me like truetype fonts (and similar formats that have program-like logic included) are copyrightable, but typefaces in general (including the font after rendering) are not.
314-15-9265
And the reason guns are protected under the constitution? You won't find it in the constitution, but you'll find it in the Federalist Papers.
It's to protect yourself against an over zealous * government.*
Nope, don't see no over zealous government around here. Move along people.
( P.S. I'm not a "gun nut." I hate the things and not only haven't ever owned one, I've never fired one. That doesn't preclude me from understanding their legal function under American political philosophy)
KFG
Therefore, it would almost certainly be legal to write a program that takes copyrighted truetype "programs" as input, and produces equivalent programs (that is, they generate the same typeface) that are not copyrighted.
Such a program would have no different legal status from a C preprocessor; a U.S. federal court would probably consider the output to be a derivative work of the input. 17 USC 106 gives the copyright owner of a font file a limited exclusive right to prepare derivative works from a copyrighted work.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Lawyers don't think like geeks. Unless the e-book cracking code was somehow important to its primary function, I don't think your argument would hold much coffee.
OTOH, decss and livid have a better argument. If the primary purpose is to enable you to back up your DVDs or play your DVDs (which, we assume, are both "fair use") then any hypothetical piracy uses they may have as a consequence of performing their primary function are not DMCA-infringing.
The same would go with an editing/creation program which allowed import of copyrighted material (e.g. an e-book editor). Its primary purpose is to create content and modify your created content. The fact that it may let you import and modify someone else's content is a side-effect.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
As is said in the comp.fonts FAQ:And thus, anything created from those bitmaps is free of the copyright restrictions on the original font program. Unintuitive, but true!
This is what explains those "1500 fonts for just $4.99!" CDs that you often see in computer stores. A company can buy up a bunch of copyrighted font programs from major type foundries, create scalable lookalikes by the above process, name them something similar but not identical to the originals, and sell collections of the things. 100% legal under current copyright law.
iSKUNK!
I searched the copyright office's web site for "fonts" and stumbled across this letter:
p df
http://www.loc.gov/copyright/1201/comments/004.
It's a comment submitted by Aladdin Enterprises (the makers of ghostscript) during the Copyright Office's review of the DMCA two years ago. It addresses almost exactly the current situation:
"...There is, in fact, a commercially important situation where this is currently the case. A software package called Fontographer is used very widely for creating TrueType font files. A bug in Fontographer causes it to improperly mark the fonts it produces in a way that causes certain other widely used software packages to consider that the font may not be embedded in documents that use the font. This incorrect marking happens by default, contrary to the wishes of the font author. The authors of Fontographer have been unresponsive to users and authors and have not fixed this problem. Thus a situation has been created where the author of the font wishes to allow users to embed it, but users who remove the protection marking (which is extremely simple technically -- it involves changing one easily-located bit in the font) will be in violation of the law."
I thought about ex post facto, but their complaint is about my *current* distribution of the program. You might be able to make it fly if you could argue that "publication" occurred in 1997 and I haven't been "distributing" it since then (even though it's on my web page, I haven't touched that page in 5 years), but that might be a tough sell. I've got much stronger arguments...
;)
PS. Lawyers don't read slashdot.
The people who do use Embed (and I have) are the ones who really need it for their work, in my case it's creating electronic documents (PDF or Corel Envoy) to send off to whomever needs this or that report within the organisation.
(Cavaets: I used to work for Goss and Varityper, and am well informed about the history of electronic-font theft by printing houses and the older copyright law surrounding fonts. I do not claim to be up-to-date on all aspects of modern font copyright. IANAL -- I Am Not A Lawyer.)
Case law following the 1972 copyright changes made it clear that the actual letter shapes are not subject to copyright, and a cursory look at the various amendments to the Copyright Acts since 1992 indicate there has been no statuary change in this area. What is protected by copyright is the digital description of a font -- the electronic file. The contents of such files go beyond the description of how to draw the character; it also includes information concerning the placement of characters in relation to other characters, sizing information, and "hints" as to how to modify the rendering as you change size, among other things.
What a lot of people tend to forget is that the name of a font is protected by trademark law. That's why Apple used place-names for a number of its in-house-developed fonts, and why "Helvetica", "Swiss", "Ariel", and "Megaron" appears to be synonyms for essentially the same typeface. They are. The difference between the fonts they name is the source of the font.
So, by using "Helvetica" in your document, a trademark, you are acknowledging the source of the font. Helvetica is a registered trademark of Linotype-Hell AG and/or its subsidiaries. Adobe, for example, licenses the face from Linotype-Hell, and is most likely required by that license to limit distribution of the outline files to people who have paid for a license to use.
Unfortunately, the embedding of the outline information in a PDF does not meet the tests for fair use. Others have listed the requirements in this discussion; I leave it to you, Dear Reader, to apply the tests and see how they fail.
The DMCA implications of "embed" is, frankly, just icing on the cake. At the base of the problem is copyright infringement, and the unjust enrichment that comes from the infringement. One person made it clear that he "needs" to embed fonts to ensure that the correct outline, kerning, and master-modification information is used when reading the document, or the result is a "mis-proportioned document" that looks ugly. The person derives a financial benefit from embedding fonts, and this can be viewed in court as "enrichment." By exceeding the boundaries imposed by the font license, s/he is profiting from the copyrighted work of another. The fact that the infringement is internal to an organization is of little weight, as the company may be the one considered guilty of the infringement, not the individual, if the copyright holder can show that the infringer is working within the scope of his/her employment.
The argument that there is no copyright infringement when the document is printed on paper, and therefore there can be no infringement because PDF is "like paper," isn't going to hold up in court. The problem is that the letterform itself is not subject to copyright, and the version of the type on paper is the letterform. Contrast this to the version of the letterform in the electronic PDF document is in its original copyrighted form. If the PDF document were to be in the form of a compressed pixel map, like a fax, then there would be no infringement because the copyrighted work would not be embedded in the electronic document. Unfortunately, such a pixel map, even heavily compressed, would be considerably larger than the desired PDF form, and the resolution of the resulting document would be fixed at the one used to render the page.
This suggests one way to avoid infringement: render the document as an image. It meets most of the original requirements, although the resulting file will be bloated. Because the outline file is not distributed in any way, there is no copying, therefore no copyright infringement. For purely inside distribution over a fast LAN, the bloat issue isn't as much of a problem. Mail servers may need to be upgraded to deal with the larger file sizes, but with the cost of mass storage plummeting the delta shouldn't be painful at all. It's definitely cheaper than lawyers and lawsuits and damages.
The more direct path to avoid infringement is for that person needs to enter into a license with the original holder of the copyright for each typeface s/he uses to specifically permit embedding those fonts s/he uses into PDFs. There may be a license fee per font to do so -- this is a good thing, to reduce file bloat from too many font outline files, not to mention the cleaner documents that will result from reducing font clutter. If there is a distinct business necessity to use specific, copyrighted type faces, the cost of entering into a license agreement should be tolerable. After all, type foundries are in business to sell type, not to bleed customers dry. For that reason, shop around. Every type house/foundry has their versions of a Times newspaper face, a san-serif block face [Helvetica/Swiss/Megaron/&c], a mono-spaced typewriter face, and useful display faces, and their licensing requirements may be more in line with your needs than what Linotype offers. That's competition.
Don't like paying cash for the right to use a letterform? The shapes of the letterforms are not subject to copyright. There is nothing I'm aware of that says you can't print a font, letter by letter, scan the printed pages, and encode them into your own font outline file using any of the many font development packages available. Then you can embed to your heart's content. (Check with a competent intellectual property attorney before doing this.) Don't forget to use your own completely made-up name for the resulting font outline.
For those not willing to put in that kind of time, there is yet another alternative: investigate other type face sources. Donald Knuth has designed a number of faces, originally rendered in Metafont, which are available as Postscript type faces. They are quite pleasant to the eye, and are very readable. Another source of potential type faces is the X Consortium, although I would check the license regarding typeface use outside of the X environment. A Google search showed there are a number of people who have contributed type faces to the public domain, as well as providing faces in a shareware distribution format.
There's no excuse for copyright infringement.