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Font Raid Spells Trouble for Publisher
rs232 writes to tell us The Register is reporting on a publishing firm that got fined for using unlicensed fonts. The firm claimed to only be actively using one font, but was found to be using approximately 11,000. In addition to their font headaches, the firm was also found to be unlicensed on 95% of their Adobe software and 75% of their Microsoft software — talk about a bad week.
FTA:
, and:So, if:
I'm sure this is just a partial list but it illustrates nicely the pitfalls of software narcs. I won't deem whether this company is off the deep end on their violations -- it looks like they were less than careful, but these "violations" can appear in bizarre and unexpected ways. I'd not even thought of the possibility one could be harboring illegitimate payload by dint of receiving someone's documents.
I have however experienced it in other ways. I one time found an installation of Excel on one of our company computers with MY NAME, and MY LICENSE KEY! To this day I have no idea who or how that was "pirated".
The BSA (ironic acronym matching a possibly more wholesome organization, n'est-ce pas?) is a snarky pest, generating ill will from C to shining C++. I'd be interested to know their bottom line, for all of the dollars spent running the BSA how many dollars are returned in generated revenue.
Then, if it is even a positive number (I doubt it), I wonder if anyone would spend the dime and time to discover what the loss in sales from ill will spawns. Of course it's only speculation on my part, but I'm pretty sure I read an article in the last year where an organization switched proprietary purchasing gears after being ratted out, and skewered for some pretty honest mistakes.
Someday, they should consolidate... just call them: MRB (MIAA/RIAA/BSA). Every new article I read about any of these pushes me further from commercial offerings (not that that is any great deal anymore).
(After visiting Camden Publishing's website (I won't give URL, suspect they've got enough without slashdot) it appears to be a small to modest size company, and while they're a publishing company, I'd be surprised to see a company their size able to sustain large budgets for auditing (though it seems BSA has finally accommodated them). And even though the numbers are 95%, and 75% for "pirated" Adobe and Microsoft products, what are the real numbers? I'd be surprised if they were big, and I'd not be surprised if it's a case of a small staff cloning (technically illegally of course) software for convenience and under audited guidelines probably would not have purchased more copies.)
Unlicensed software is always font of trouble in the business world, it seems.
The simplest solution is to use Courier or Courier New. Noone uses typewriters anymore, so it will confuse everyone and set you apart from everyone else.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
The publishing firm had claimed to be using just one font but in fact was found using 11,000.
How is it even possible to use 11,000 different type faces?? They have to be adding up all the fonts on all the PCs. 500 PCs with unlicensed Adobe Garamond = 500 fonts.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Being a publisher, they should have known to use a spell checker.
*Sigh... I know creating fonts is a lot of work and pretty-much an art form, but still... sigh.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Is it a police organization? A government agency charged with protecting the virtue of copyright? What company in their right mind lets some schmuck come in and do an audit without a warrant?
Unless this is a normal occurance in England...
They should get busted. I'm wishy-washy on the idea of copyright (and how far it should extend) but one thing I do believe is that businesses should pay for software with which they make money. It's one thing for the hobbyist who uses photoshop to make desktop backgrounds not to pay for it; it's another thing when it's a world-class photographer who supports themselves based on their photoshop output.
A question, though - why exactly is this in the YRO section? It has nothing to do with someone's guaranteed rights being violated or abridged. In fact, it is just the opposite; Adobe's rights (and those of the font distributors) are being protected. Someone broke the law, and got turned in by an ex-employee, probably somebody they crapped on. Fuck 'em, let them pay the full fines, and then some. Personally, I suggest collecting the fines from the employees of the company that made the decision to use unlicensed software and fonts. Why should they get off scott free? They're the ones who actually broke the law, the company charter didn't fly its ass up out of the file cabinet and insert the CD in the drive.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I used to work for a bank that did a fair job keeping track of licenses, or sort of. They purchased licenses for all employees for Microsoft products, eventhough a decent percentage of employees did not have it installed. They also purchased a copy of Photoshop and Corel Draw for every marketing person, eventhough only two people used the products. However, they loaded and never registered many pieces of software which would not have been a big deal to cover monetarily: Winzip, PDF printer, Winlpr, fonts, etc. It just boggles the mind that they go through so much trouble for boxed products, but just never did anything about other software. I told them that it would be better that Microsoft find out they were 20% out of compliance than for some shareware author to find out they had been using software for years on 100% of their machines without paying a dime.
Click here or here.
Microsoft Sans Licence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Software_All iance
A graphic designer I know (an ex-gf, actually) has not paid for either software or fonts for the last decade. She has rationalized that because once, in a staff position, she authorized the purchase of approximately 20 seats of adobe software for a graphics department, so Adobe owes her. She uses cracked copies.
I've often wondered what would happen to her and her clients if Adobe got wind of this. (Yes, it was a spectacularly bad break up.) =)
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
...it's the cure for what ails you.
Pirating fonts for use in for-profit activities falls under YRO?
I didn't realize that this was a right.
If this crackdown is accompanied by a corresponding drop in the cost of licences for some of these overpriced apps (Hello...Photoshop?) I'm all for this.
I application companies can defray the costs across more copies sold, prices should drop. Unless you believe Adobe is LOSING money on those educational copies of Photoshop (which don't come with support or upgrade options, of course) software should and could cost much less than it currently does.
There's a pretty basic rule: if you're using an application every day, and you're making money with it you should pay for it.
I'm especially disgusted by people who DEVELOP and SELL software who use...um...liberated copies of applications. I worked at a place that charged substantial licensing fees for their apps, but had not a single licenced copy of Word around. Stolen text editors, stolen backup software, stolen operating systems.
Unfortunately, all too typical.
Skot Nelson music is my saviour / i was maimed by rock and roll
Though the situation from the article happened in the UK, I think that US law differs in that fonts or typefaces have no legal protection. Because of this, in the US one would be able to copy fonts to their heart's content . . . Ironic that the home of the MPAA and RIAA and DMCA has no protection for typefaces . . .
The article is a little unclear and more than a little inflammatory. My read of it is that the publisher actually wanted the BSA to come in and do the audit. The £80,000 they ended up paying wasn't a fee or a fine paid to the BSA; it was the cost of buying all the software licenses they needed to get fully into compliance.
So were they suckers? I'd say so, yes -- the BSA are greedy sharks and there was probably another option besides paying for every font and every piece of software on their network (e.g. get rid of some of it). But the company does seem to have been asking for it.
Breakfast served all day!
I was a little dismayed when I first read the blurb. I could swear there wasn't any type of legal protection for typefaces in US law... One of the reasons that Adobe et al. made a push towards programmatically described fonts (Type 1 and Type 3). Although they couldn't protect the typeface itself, they could protect the copyrighted code that generated the font.
Then I remembered where the register.co.uk was located. Thank god... I was almost forced to RTFA. Phew.
You can't win, Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Just goes to show you - if ever anticipate having a disgruntled worker - license all of your software. Kind of funny that we bought 100 licenses of our corp. font and actually kept a spreadsheet for a long time. It got harder to manage as people left the company and so the font license had to be credited (we have thousands of folks working for us so 100 just covered marketing).
www.wildpad.com
Gahdammit. I am one of hundreds of thousands of /. users and NO ONE listened to my prophetic vision back in April? Dammit. I called the cops. They wouldn't listen either. I am just too darned potent! ;-)
Uh... Oh... maybe the didn't listen to me.
--
I've worked with and on computers for nearly thirty years and I'm frequently surprised by the amount of piracy in workplaces. Oh, I'm not talking about out-right piracy like bittorrented copies of cracked Photoshop, but lots of little things.
For instance, I've worked in commercial printers that literally had thousands of typefaces. Let's say you have a job you need printed on a printing press. You collect all the images, layout files, typefaces, etc., and you send that to the printer. The printer is supposed to delete those fonts when the job is complete. They don't, of course, so you have millions of pirated typefaces out there.
Another example: images that are only supposed to be used once, logos "retouched" and used in other publications, templates you're supposed to pay for obtained from non-traditional (i.e. free) sources, trials that miraculously seem to go on forever, etc.
Stuff like this happens in all kinds of offices all over the planet. There are so many companies out there who, if they took a real and honest accounting of the software and tools and plug-ins they have, would find that if they did actually purchase everything they own, they'd likely not have half of it. And if they did, they would have spent themselves into bankruptcy. But they rationalize that it's all necessary, it's something they need to do in order to do business. Indeed, many companies couldn't perform some of their services without the stuff they obtained.
I dunno. I think that, one day, someone really large with lots and lots of locations and chances to pirate stuff is going to get slammed with a huge fine and it's going to open a very large can of worms. If Best Buy really did use Winternals products illegally, it would not surprise me in the slightest, and it would be very, very typical of most companies, large and small.
P.S. And, yes, I can't claim my hands are completely clean.
P.P.S. Don't copy that floppy.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
It's one thing for the hobbyist who uses photoshop to make desktop backgrounds not to pay for it; it's another thing when it's a world-class photographer who supports themselves based on their photoshop output.
It sounds like you are trying to justify piracy. Good luck!
I'll probably be modded down for this...
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
It really surprises me that people in the IT industry can be so apathetic to theft. We all know how many millions (billions ?) get put into software development each year, and how thankless a job it really is. Just as important, we're in this industry! I write code most every day of my life, as do many others here, to make a living.
My open source code I'm happy to give away, it was fun to write! But please, let me eat with the boring, soulless code I have to write at work.
Writing software has made me appreciate the work that goes into professional level production of electronic work at any level: music, _fonts_, software, graphics, games, etc. I don't know about y'all, but I don't pirate software, I buy my music, and if I can't afford the software, I don't use it. Considering how much good software's available for free, I can't see how someone can justify stealing commercial apps.
I can't see how anyone expecting to make a living in the IT industry can pirate with a clear conscious.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
"How is it even possible to use 11,000 different type faces??"
They're the publisher of "How to write an effective ransom note".
In the context of the article, a "font" is a computer program whose input is a character code and a target size and whose output is a hinted glyph outline. It is this computer program, not the typeface design itself, that is subject to United States copyright.
From one of the bazillion font download sites. Perhaps they downloaded 11001_free_fonts.zip.
Do we have open-source fonts, like we have open-source software, that anyone can change and improve on ?
Okay, I'm curious, and I'm sure this has come up before, but I'd appreciate it if someone could explain how the BSA has the right to spot-audit a company. Yes, they can take you to court and sue you based on the words of a disgruntled employee, but what if you're in compliance and you simply don't want the BSA coming into your office. Suppose the disgruntled employee is lying. I simply can't see how the words of a disgruntled employee could even be enough to make a court compel a company to comply.
Police need a warrant to search a business. How is the BSA endowed with more rights than the police? Many companies have sensitive documents and information and generally restrict access, as they have a right to. And yet the BSA can push right through? None of this makes much sense to me.
From what I hear, a LOT of publishers never delete the fonts that clients bring in to print their stuff. Its pretty commonplace, I'm suprised this hasn't happened before.
Where I currently work management encourages using pirated software. We are a print shop that uses Adobe Creative Suite (a paid for legal copy) for 90% of our work, but some customers still submit Quark and Freehand files. InDesign cannot open new Quark files, and Illustrator cannot open Freehand files, but I have to get the job done so I use programs downloaded from the internet and cracks to take care of the serial numbers. Quark is over $1000, and Freehand is about half that. The CEO said the company cannot justify the cost of these programs for just a few customers. And I don't even pay attention to who owns what fonts, because I know my company would never spend one cent on a font. I imagine the vast majority of the print industry is exactly like this. If Quark and Macromedia (Adobe) opened up their formats and made them play nicely with Creative Suite we wouldn't have to use pirated software. If fonts wearn't so damn expensive I'd consider thinking about paying for some of them.
Replying to myself once I felt that clarification was needed:
Specifically, the opinion you linked states that "a font scaling program is copyrightable." Each digital font in a modern vector format includes a "hinting" subroutine for each glyph that deforms the outline font 1. for optimal display at a given pixel size and 2. (especially for fonts in Arabic or South Asian scripts) to match those of the characters surrounding them. Therefore, each font file contains its own font scaling program and is therefore copyrightable.
That should be modded up!
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
these very same guys were sueing p2p users for sharing their ebooks.
11,000 fonts? come on. At a normal pub firm 11,000 is probably what they found just on the FONT SERVER. At a printing firm you'd find way more than that, because every job comes in with its own fonts and each font is unique.
Each. Font.
I have seen two jobs from two different clients use the SAME font from the same provider but with different creation dates and the fonts were just different enough that we couldn't use one font for both jobs.
Please, for the love of all that the BSA holds dear to its little black heart, don't start checking font licenses or we're ALL DOOOOOMED!
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
The Copyright Office specifically addresses fonts which are defined algorithmically:
So, a program with which you do typeface design may be copyrighted. Even if a font consists of programming language type instructions (such as TrueType fonts), it is not copyrightable, since that is just an "alternative means of fixing the data.""National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Don't just talk about it, write about it! There's got to be a book in there somewhere...
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
r :P
I use open office exclusively at home
That's what Sterling Ball of Ball Strings found out (http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html). I took him three year to get his company Microsoft free. From his example our company now only runs open source software. Well except for one computer used test documents going to someone else's windows computer. It is being used less and less.
If you are a software developer that lives on the high seas???
The only solution for this type of BS is strict enforcement.
The only reason that whole litanies of individuals, companies, governments, and institutions are sitting pretty with many pirated copies of MS Office is because Microsoft only enforces the licensing occasionally, to be able to say that they do still care about it.
However, if they enforced and punished every incident of piracy (as they're trying to do with the Windows Genuine Advantage tool), then more people would experience firsthand the detriment of piracy, and the advantage of FOSS alternatives. More people would use FOSS, and the market share would increase, making further development accelerate.
It has to get worse before it gets better.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
A three martini lunch and a copy of >
Moral: Don't Drink and Set Type.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
As part of their "Get Legal" campaign.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Does anyone else find it amusing that the fonts were audited by Monotype (the company frequently accused of making similar but slightly different versions of popular Linotype fonts)?
(i.e. Monotype's Arial to Linotype's Helvetica)
The fact that as a society we've largely forgotten this is why we're having so much trouble with patent trolls and DRM and BSA "enforcers" and such.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
...been doing graphics over 15 years on computers with no issues w/ fonts.
I guess the problem was the exemployee, because most people never give a shti. So many fonts are freeware support them! If your client wants some old linotype font & is not supplying the font file, tell him its time for a new image.
1001freefonts.com -this site has been around for a long time... built all my old rave flyers with these unique fonts.
it was probably the exemployee who created these fonts, put it on the computers then told on the company!
Kill your TV
I use to work for a web site company that had 100 employees with 100 computers loaded with Photoshop, Flash, and Dreamweaver. Then one day I come in to work and my machine no longer has the programs loaded. Turns out they were getting audited and only had licenses for about 10% of the computers. So much for a "web site" company that considers themselves "pros".
Can I bum a sig?
Yes thats what I meant.
I didn't RTFA, so I dont realize the extent. I mean most actual print inside the book is simple easy to read times or somethin right? It just seems to me that their usage on that level would be mostly within titles. I also agree that a publisher claiming to have only one font in active use is pretty silly. I just learned that there is a TON of fonts out there. But 11k is a large percentage of fonts available.
again, IDKWTFIATA
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Thank you for saying what I wanted to say without looking like an asshole.
Now I'll come in and look like an asshole.
If ($ made/saved by doing illegal act) > (percentage chance of getting caught) * (fine/penalty you'd have to deal with from getting caught), you do the illegal act, plain and simple.
Example: eBaum's World steals content and animations from other sites and artists. They make millions of dollars from advertising (popups/page ads) by stealing this content. The odds on someone actually successfully taking them to court are low, and even if they do get sued, how much of that money would legally be the artist's? The money EBW has made, but divided by the total number of artists, leaving them with little more than a few hundred bucks?
So ($ from content theft) > (% chance of getting busted) * (payoff if they did.) Therefore, it makes sense for EBW to steal content, and Eric is a genius for doing so.
Same goes for all piracy/copyright infringement, big or small.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 SU CK IT MP AA
I've always hated the way windows handles fonts. It's horrible. You just dump them in the windows fonts folder, and that's it. It's a giant mess if you need to use a lot of fonts. Anyone can shove fonts in there, and you never know where the came from. This does happen a lot too. I only installed 10 fonts, and over the last few months I've acquired 20-30 rogues fonts from who knows where.
It's very hard to track down where a font comes from and what you are allowed to do with it. When it's time to select a font, you just get a big pile of shit to wade through, with every font on the system, and the only info you get it what it's name is.
That said, if you need some free fonts, here are some good ones.
The BitStream Vera Collection (nice gnu fonts)
AEnigma's Font Archive (free, and free to do with as you please)
Your opinion on the morality of an action shouldn't change based on whether you're involved or not; it's either morally right or wrong regardless. Any other position is hypocritical.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
But for marketing purposes, % makes more of an impact.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Its cool. Linus is welcome in my house anytime!
"If God created us in his own image we have more than reciprocated." - Voltaire
Here's one way to get even:
:)
http://news.com.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html
Gotta love the way pressure forces people to take extreme measures.
When they come without a warrant, and you refuse ( which you can ), they just come back tomrrow WITH a warrant and with a vengance to make an example of you.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
They can stucture the fines in a varaity of ways. They can ask for the maximum fines from a company, or they will accept a lower amount if you do what they want in a nice polite manner. They have gone as far as recomend that the head IT person be fired, in exchange for lowered fines.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Windows licenses on computers running Linux.
Software purchased, but never installed.
Software lost or stolen and identical replacements bought.
Software purchased and installed on computers that are no longer in use because either the computer was replaced with a newer one, or the company has gone out of business.
Volume purchases that over-buy the actual amount needed or used.
Other causes.
I never hear figures given on excess and redundant software purchases.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
please revoke everyone's license on MS Comic Sans!!!
You can't trademark, patent, or copyright a traditional typeface -- at least, not in the United States. For those who don't know, a typeface or font used to be a collection of metal blocks with raised edges which, when used in a printing press, would impress the images of the corresponding characters onto a page.
There is absolutely zero protection for the distinctive look of a typeface, which is why you can go out and buy "look-alike" fonts and why you can even download clone fonts.
The intellectual property protection for computer fonts comes from the idea that fonts are computer programs -- because a computer font is a file consisting of a set of instructions that tell the computer how to render the characters that make up the font. So copyright applies.
However, there's nothing stopping you from printing out each of the characters at some large point size (say, so there's one character filling each page), painstakingly tracing those characters with graph paper, and creating your own knock-off font. In fact, this technique is used a lot. What you won't be able to do, unless you're a master craftsman or engineer, is determine and duplicate the hints that make a font legible at small point sizes.
Now, I can't speak for the IP laws in the UK, but it is at least true that in the U.S., only computer fonts enjoy legal protection, and only because they are considered software.
Whoops, forgot to say, you can trademark the name of a font... But most "clone" fonts have names that are just different enough to avoid trademark disputes. (Hence the proliferation of "Swiss" and "Helvetica" and "Sans Serif" variants, which are basically all the same or substantially similar on the printed page.)
So you think Novell, Red Hat, etc should pay for Linux? Do you believe everyone should pay for anything with which they make money? Let's say an industry sells bottled oxygen, extracted from air. Should they pay the farmers whose plants produce the oxygen that's found in the atmosphere?
I do believe this: it's wrong to take something away from someone without permission. Stealing is stealing, the thief needs not sell the product of his crime to be a thief. But copying something is not stealing. I think what's wrong with the whole "piracy" thing is that it's becoming a common idea to associate crime with profit denial. That's totally, utterly, wrong. Getting profits is not a God-given right.
There are laws granting limited monopolies to people who create things, because those monopolies are supposed to be an incentive for creativity. However, there is a big problem in identifying where to draw the line. One limit is: no copyrights for raw data. Another limit: no copyright for purely utilitarian creations. This is the one that denies copyrights to font faces. The alphabet has one purpose, which is to enable communication by writing. You cannot copyright the shapes of the letters themselves, because the alphabet itself is public domain and recognizable variations of the letter shapes are derived works, with a clearly defined use. If it were possible to copyright utilitarian creations, then someone could coyright, for instance, "3242 + 1547 = 4789" and every company on whose accounts that addition appeared would have to pay royalties.
The biggest problem with the whole IP mess today is that delusion that anyone has an intrinsic right to obtain profit everywhere. Let's face it, no one has the right to get paid for anything unless they cease to have possession of something. You sell me your car, then I have a car and you have not, I must pay you in compensation for that. I light my candle in yours, I have a light but have taken nothing away from you, I owe you nothing. Patents and copyrights are narrowly defined exceptions to these rules, with one purpose only: to give an incentive to creativity. The one and only reason why anybody should pay for the right of copying a work is when that payment will generate, either directly or indirectly, the creation of new works.
Isn't writing a program to distribute copyrighted works somewhat frowned upon? How exactly does sending an email with attached copyrighted fonts different then my old buddy napster?
A more important question is why did this shop have so many unlicensed fonts?
Were they not aware they were supposed to pay for them? Perhaps, but I doubt it.
Were they trying to stick it to the man? I suspect not.
What's more likely is that the ludicrous price of font packages drove them to two options: use them anyway or go out of business.
In a capatilist society, prices are (supposed to be) driven by demand, by what the customer will pay for them. Now I suspect these people aren't the only ones 'pirating' fonts. I would be surprised if there were any printing outfits that had all their font licences up to date. Therefore they are not priced at a level their customers are willing to pay.
I wonder if this place will follow suit with other businesses that have been bitten by the BS Alliance.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I've witnessed software license "raids" twice. In both cases it was the direct result of an admin who recently quit and was (rightfully) pissed off enough to report the company and provide a signature to back his claim.
Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X and Windows desktops with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout.
Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.
I've used Scribus on a bunch of projects lately, and I've been really impressed. It's a perfectly viable alternative to Adobe's pay layout tools for me.
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." (Diderot)
you're a pirate. Unless you hack the file to remove the embedded font before opening it... but then you'd be circumventing the document's security, in direct violation of the DMCA, making you a felon.
On the plus side, you can now remove the politicians who support these laws from office by emailing them files with embedded fonts that you own the license to. If they reply to your email with content that proves they've read your message you have proof that they've either engaged in intellectual property theft or illegal hacking activities and you can bring suit against them.
Remember why these fonts were published in the first place. It wasn't a generosity of spirit, it was so their for-profit products would be useful enough to get marketshare.
Printed material is fully rendered and doesn't depend on anything held by the user other than a good light source.
Images are fully rendered and only require an appropriate viewer.
But HTML pages (among other things) require that the specified fonts actually be available on the viewer's system. MS could put out the best HTML designer in the world, but if it used fonts that weren't on the user's systems then the results would still look like crap. Making the fonts readily available makes their products more useful and hence more attractive than a competitor's.
I was one of the early adapters of the MS TT fonts and it made a HUGE difference in the appearance of many sites. The people who use 'FrontPage' et al aren't techically sophisticated enough to understand why it's a Really Bad Idea to use the really cool fonts. So they put a lot of effort into creating cool pages that were then rendered using my default font, rarely with good results.
P.S., the same analysis applies to postscript and PDF. In that case the format designers decided to provide a mechanism for embedding any necessary fonts.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Dear Adobe,
...and a free upgrade to CS3 when it comes out.
...and a case of beer - good beer - in bottles, not cans
I will gladly rat out the company I used to work for in exchange for one legit copy of Adobe CS2
Sincerely,
Disgruntled ex-employee
Shit rolls down hill, that's one honest thing I have heard come from a managers mouth, and you don't want to be on the bottom. This has happened to me before:
Head Hancho A -> Manager B: I heard from board member A that X is becoming a hot topic. I need a report on my desk by next week.
Manager B -> Manager C: Could you do me a favor and see whats going on with X? Thanks, I need an answer by this thursday.
Manager C -> Employee A: E:A, I will have you check X, and could you also do the cost difference between X and Y? I need it by wednsday, thanks.
Employee A -> Employee B: E:B, I'm going to have you check up on X and compare it to Y, also check up on Z for me will you. I need it by tomorrow (tuesday).
Employee B -> Wife: I hate my fuckin job.
Welcome to corporate America.
I've been considering starting my own home desktop publishing business. I keep doing things for people for free and it's gotten to a point where I've gotten pretty good and could actually make a bit of money for what I do.
Would this font issue affect someone like me? What if I create a small brand for myself, even in a tiny market? What if it gets bigger? Will I have to pay someone just for using a certain font?
I never thought of such thing.
Having unlicensed software is not a crime.
Using unlicensed software is not a crime.
Installing unlicensed software is not a crime.
Duplicating and distributing software without a license is a crime.
Unless MS/Adobe can prove you installed more copies than you purchased then they don't have a leg to stand on. For all we know, 75% of that company's employees brought in unused-at-home legal copies of Office/Photoshop/whatever for their own use. If I illegally copy every CD I own, and leave all those copies lying on the sidewalk, you are breaking no laws by picking up those copies and installing them.
Connie, in Seattle, gave birth to a two headed devil child. Father claims "The child is a weirdo. I'm not behind it!"
I was going to say something totally awesome involving terrorist and their tie to stolen fonts.
but I couldn't figure out how to tie in microsoft
too bad, it was really gonna be good
Arial 8pt ....71pt Underlined
Arial 8pt Italic
Arial 8pt Bold
Arial 8pt Italic Bold
Arial 8pt Strikethrough
Arial 8pt Underlined
Arial 9pt
Arial 9pt Italic
Arial 9pt Bold
Arial 9pt Italic Bold
Arial 9pt Strikethrough
Arial 9pt Underlined
Arial 10......
-snip-
Arial 72pt
Arial 72pt Italic
Arial 72pt Bold
Arial 72pt Italic Bold
Arial 72pt Strikethrough
Arial 72pt Underlined
repeat with courier = 11000 fonts?
So, let me get this straight - the company was caught using unlicensed fonts, Adobe software and MS software, and we're supposed to feel sorry for them?
You want to use software, you abide by the terms of the licence. You don't want to abide by the terms of the licence, you don't use the software and seek out an alternative with a more agreeable licence. End of story.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Perhaps 3 PC's? or 300?
Unless they had 5.333333/ 533.33333 computers total, in which case n/m
You wrote:
Which citation deals specifically with the context of British law?
did you know there is a patent on the color of nivea cans?
this is just insane! patented colors and fonts... I even read something about patented PLACES! think about the FIFA worldcup... these WORDS are patented! what will be patentable next? I can't even make something up! everything I come up with (where the patentability would be ridiculous enough) IS ALREADY PATENTABLE!
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
"The problem is complicated by the fact that some fonts can arrive as part of other people's documents and can sometimes stay, unlicensed, on a network."
1) Are the fonts embedded into the documents?
2) Are they using the fonts for other work?
Just because someone specifies a font in a document; doesn't mean that you have the font on your system. Your system substitues the fonts. Most documents that get created don't use embedded fonts; because it takes up additional space. And even if they authors did embed the fonts; they are not using them. You have to actually extract the fonts.
So; if some one sends me a document with embedded fonts; now that means that I am some sort of pirate without even know about it. Uhhh, the logic here is flawed.
PS: I call bull.
If you use the font I designed, it does no injury to me and my right to prohibit you from doing so is a merely "conventional" right.
The grey area -- where libertarians and propertarians rightly and interestingly fight -- is in those things that I "own" but am not currently in possession of.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Once the thing exists, it is just about impossible to exclude people from accessing its benefits. Like the sun. It would be a bitch to replace that $%^@er, so it has a tremendous amount of value. But since there's one up there, it would take a major C.M. Burns project to blot it out.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I swear to Bog that I put that comment in before seeing the new front page news item. Weird world.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Some would call them butt-ugly (MS Comic? Arial?!?!), but the MS core web fonts are still available: http://fontconfig.org/webfonts/ -- MS licensed them in a way that makes it hard to put the Genie back in the bottle.
Why don't you have the customers send PDFs? The fonts are embedded in the PDF file, so the output is supposed to be exactly the same anywhere. No pirated software, no unlicensed fonts, you punt the issue back to the customer.
What they're referring to as a "font scaling program" is the command interpreter which executes the instructions in the font - i.e. a TrueType interpreter, or in the case of Postscript typefaces, the Postscript interpreter itself. That is, any code which may be used to draw scaled typefaces, but is not itself part of a typeface. Any instructions which are specific to a typeface are not copyrightable in the US.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Well if it's anything like how they count CD burners... (multiplying by write speed) then it's probably 75% connect to a shared drive.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
So you think Novell, Red Hat, etc should pay for Linux?
Well, they DO pay for Linux. They give money to OSDL, they hire developers, they give away their work so that the whole Linux community benefits. They also take some marketing effort to make Linux adopted wider.
I also disagree that you need to lose something to get paid. If a novellist writes a novel that gets printed five times, he has done a good work and deserves to be paid five times. What's wrong is that the publishing Co gets paid, and that the copyright is too long. It should be unable to get rid of exclusive rights to the work (except for giving it into public domain), and the copyright should stretch to say "first publication + 25 years". Any "nonmaterial goods" (or "intellectual property") that maintain nonzero value that long should be considered part of the culture anyway, and go public domain.
In fact, I would rather be a famous poet (musician, programmer, etc.) than a rich one. Recognition is the award.
Going back to topic. The firm was using someone else's work to do business, knowingly and without permission. Play with fire, get burned. News at 11.
WYSIWIG, but what you see might not be what you need
Blockquoth the AC:
And speaking as someone who currently works on code that ultimately goes into those ludicrously expensive 3D applications the GP poster mentioned, I'd like to thank that poster personally for ripping me off. After all, like all software developers, I am ludicrously wealthy as a result of the software I make. My employer being ripped off doesn't in any way impact the profit-sharing scheme that pays my rent and that of my equally ludicrously overpaid colleagues.
I imagine those who spend months designing high quality professional fonts feel much the same way. Font design is one of those crafts where very few people are genuinely good at it, but using good work has a subtle but very real effect. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to expect those benefitting from the hard work of skilled craftsmen to pay fair compensation in return, and I fail to see why it matters whether they're doing it for personal financial benefit or for some other reason.
I find it tragic that the GP's position is so acceptable around here that it actually gets modded insightful.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Perhaps you realise this and just wrote loosely -- your mention of MM fonts suggests so, at least -- but for the avoidance of doubt NMerriam isn't talking about weights like light, regular, book, demi-bold, and so on. What's being described here is a collection of subtly adjusted font designs, often called "opticals", which are tuned for use within a fairly tight range of sizes. For example, you might have four variants in your family:
Although stroke weight often is one of the variations, other changes commonly include how open the bowls of letters are, the relative x-height, the relative size of serifs and other decorations, and the default amount of inter-letter spacing.
Random factoid for the day: if you read any of the research into what makes a highly readable font for low-resolution screen use, many of the same elements are used in caption-size optical variants to maintain legibility at smaller sizes in print as well.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Not sure what these look like yet, but people should be aware of the Stix Fonts project. They are professionaly produced and cover a large number of glyphs (several thousand). I submitted a blurb to slashdot when they were having public comments on the license, but it got rejected. Anyway, they are intended to be free (of charge) for a lot of use. Not sure if they can be included in a Linux distro.
Since the BSA has clients, they are not ""generic" software troopers" who "go in with a mind of checking one type of software". I don't know what a "software trooper" is, but the one type of software the BSA checks for is the software whose copyright is held by their clients.
The BSA doesn't care about programs whose copyrights aren't held by their clients. This is somewhat similar to music labels that don't sign up with the RIAA or movie studios that aren't signed up with the MPA—for all of their bluster about caring for artists, these representative organizations actually don't care because they're not paid by anyone but their clients.
The BSA doesn't care about free software either, so if you're violating a free software license the BSA won't alert the free software copyright holder.
The question that comes up a lot during these threads is how does the BSA gain entrance in the first place—read the licenses to all of your software (something you should do anyhow, regardless of how many licenses there are or if you're a business). Some proprietary software licenses say that you (the licensee) grant the licensor or their representatives the power to inspect for license conformance. Such inspection, in the BSA's opinion, can be done on-site or over a network. This is another on-the-ground practical reason why it behooves everyone to run exclusively free software.
Digital Citizen
The files just replicated all by themsleves?
re your question of rivet materials for aluminium:
p df
in the previous, now closed thread:
If you use rivet materials other than the parent material you risk galvanic corrosion. For the combination of steel (rivet) and aluminum (panel), it can be severe,
particularly in moist salt environments (like cars in the snowy states). The aluminium and steel will both rot and crumble away with corrosion. You can see an example of this in an older car that has a aluminium air conditionig condenser (the thing that looks like a radiator in front of the real radiator) which has steel side supports.. you may see signs of corrosion (white powder) where the two touch. You can look up a listing of galvanic compatibility of metals online. Metals far apart on the list tend to attack each other badly. Here is a list:
http://www.ocean.udel.edu/mas/masnotes/corrosion.
Where do you work?! Sign me up. I just get a measly salary.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Well, that certainly adds fuel of truth to your argument. However, I very much doubt that the individual who pirated your CAD program to tinker with it was ever seriously going to buy it. If he downloaded 10,000 programs, was he seriously going to buy all of them too? (Yes, that's a slippery slope, sorry, but I think the point holds to an extent.) Most people I know .. Scratch that -- EVERY person I have ever met in my personal life -- would not be willing to pay $3,000 for ANY piece of software... There is morality, and there is truth. Unfortunately neither are of any help in the real world :)
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com