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.

Comments

the beast of the nature

[yagu]

FTA:

The publisher was the subject of a BSA enquiry after an ex-employee tip-off, said the BSA, which is funded by software companies.

, and:

"For many companies fonts are an integral part of their branding, and none more so than publishers who rely on them to produce many distinct publications."
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.

So, if:

• you own or are part of a company that has ex-employees OR
• you receive documents from other people/companies

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.)

Re:the beast of the nature

[spun]

In the publishing business, managing your fonts is an important part of doing business. Technically, I'm not even sure that customers are allowed to include fonts, but they do it all the time. Typefaces are not copyrightable, but computer generated fonts count as programs, and so they are copyrightable. Generally speaking, if I bought a page layout program, "PageFoo," and my printing house did not own a copy, I could not include a copy of PageFoo with my files to enable that printing house to print them out. Is it technically legal to do the same with font files unless the license permits this? I don't think so. Does everyone do it anyway? Yes. Do publishers keep customer font around in case the customer forgets to send it in? All the time.

Re:the beast of the nature

[WoodstockJeff]

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.

And the fact that several Microsoft and Adobe applications will "helpfully" insert font files into documents and even emails so that you can have a proper "presentation" with the end user (who might not have the same fonts installed) doesn't do much for anyone trying to keep things legal. If I open a PDF with embedded fonts, am I now a pirate?

Re:the beast of the nature

[BrynM]

When I installed the Windows Vista Beta, there was a segment in the EULA expressly saying that you can't copy the fonts
Easy to figure out why...

Funny that the core web fonts have been discontinued by MS as well. Sadly, the font industry is riddled with companies stealing each other's fonts all the time.

Go get some free fonts and leave the "trendy" fonts to the companies willing to eat eachother and their customers alive. There are font creators out there who want you to use their fonts without their pound of flesh, but they are being driven away from a very controversial and cruel industry.

Re:the beast of the nature

[CRCulver]

Go get some free fonts and leave the "trendy" fonts to the companies willing to eat eachother and their customers alive. There are font creators out there who want you to use their fonts without their pound of flesh, but they are being driven away from a very controversial and cruel industry.

You're joking, right? Most of the free fonts offered online are not suitable for publishing. Commercial fonts are carefully, painstakingly tweaking for maximum visual effect, and most font hobbyists just can't put that much time into theirs.

Furthermore, these free fonts usually have limited coverage of Unicode. What can you do with them if you have to typeset a text with many usual glyphs, such as IPA characters, Eastern European Latin characters, or even non-Latin scripts such as Cyrillic, Arabic, or CJK?

There are only a very few free-in-as-freedom fonts that are actually of sufficient quality that publishers can use them. The Computer Modern fonts used with the TeX typesetting engine is one example, but that's only appropriate for the sciences, and if you want a TeX font for the humanities you have to cough up money for the Lucida commercial font.

Wha...?

[Reality Master 101]

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.

Re:Wha...?

[2nd Post!]

Linotype claims over 6,500 fonts available.
Adobe claims over 2,200 typefaces available.
Bitstream claims over 1,400 fonts available.

If you look at MyFonts.com you will see that the list over 49,105 fonts available from 282 font foundries, out 574 known foundries listed on that site.

Licensing woes

[totallygeek]

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.

I told you! :-)

[writermike]

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.

I'm shocked! Shocked, to see this abuse!

[boyfaceddog]

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!

Other side of coin

[Nom du Keyboard]

On the other side of the coin, I wonder how much software is paid for but never used?

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.