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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.
*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.
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.
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.
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!
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 ?
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.
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.
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
Read the software license you agreed to when you installed most any software. Almost all of them have a clause in there that says you agree, at your expense, to let the software maker or their appointed agent come in at any time and audit you for license compliance. Note that you get to foot the bill even if they find you're 100% in compliance. If you don't agree to the audit, you're automatically in violation of your license agreement.
And you won't be in compliance, that's a guarantee. Remember that, by the BSA's rules, merely having all the original media, license certificates and product keys for every single copy you've got installed is not sufficient. Only an original receipt or invoice made out to your company proves legal ownership, and your company probably threw those away long ago.
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.
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)
in the context of TFA... the company in question is British... American law doesn't apply... yet...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Yet your CEO is able to justify accepting jobs from customers he cannot, technically, support. This analogy is admittedly imprecise, but if a customer came in with a job on eight-inch floppies, would you accept it? Or would you turn the customer away, saying, "Sorry, we don't have the facilities to read your job data?"
Let's assume computers didn't exist, and you were still using cast lead type. If a customer came in requesting a job in Garamond, and you didn't have a case of Garamond, would you turn away the job, or suggest substituting a typeface you do have?
If we make the analogy more precise, and the customer walks in with their own case of Garamond type, would you return the type to them when the job was complete?
It's my personal view that computer software and data, once it's been created, is essentially valueless, since it can be infinitely duplicated at zero cost. So I don't see unsanctioned copying ("piracy") as a problem, but merely an inevitability that all software authors and vendors must acknowledge and learn to live with. However, even I am taken aback by the rather cavalier attitude your CEO seems to show for the economic realities facing those who created the tools he uses to conduct his business and satisfy his customers.
Our civilization stands at a crossroads in our social and economic evolution. The computer heralds a day where even physical goods can be duplicated infinitely and effortlessly (assuming we survive the rising seas), and copyrights and patents as we conceptualize them today truly will become meaningless. But we're in a transition period, and that future is in peril. Physical artifacts can't be freely duplicated -- a fundamental assumption of the old economy -- but digital artifacts can, which the old economy can't cope with. It will take an exercise of good character and strong ethics by many people to carry us through to the real New Economy.
Your CEO may care to participate in this transition, and acknowledge the good work he is able to do by rewarding the good work of others.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
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
Read the software license you agreed to when you installed most any software.
Just wondering... does the license apply if the software is pirated?
I mean, isn't the customer signaling their intent to pay zero for the product and basically saying "I don't intend to follow your license. If I push this little button will you install for me anyway?"
Seems to me that the software industry is trying to show "intent to consent" to the license where no such thing exists.
I know that the ONLY reason that I push the button is that is what I have to do to install it.
Seems to me that a "contract" or "license" has to be agreed upon BEFORE accepting payment for the product to be legal... not afterwards.
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
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."
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.
If some BSA guy shows up, just inform him that he is not welcome. If he tries to force or sneak his way onto your PC, call the police and have him arrested. If he bothers you every day hoping you'll crack, you can get a restraining order.
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.
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
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.
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.
Clauses like this in contracts of adhesion (meaning a contract where you did not get a chance to negotiate terms with the other party) are typically invalid and regularly struck down in courts. Basically, if a clause would not have been accepted by a hypothetical 'reasonable person' who had a chance to negotiate, in the opinion of the court, then it is void. Letting a third party come into your company and poke through all your computer systems with sensitive data on them is not something that the courts often regard as reasonable. Here's a key phrase from the US case law, lifted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_of_adhesion
Remember that, by the BSA's rules, merely having all the original media, license certificates and product keys for every single copy you've got installed is not sufficient.
Ah, the BSA. This is a little scam they run. Here's how it works: They come along to you with a bunch of impressive-looking lawyers and make all these demands. You're probably a fairly small company. You don't have legal staff in-house. You don't realise that the law is actually on your side at this point; you think that they're telling the truth, and you have to let them audit you. So you let them.
At this point you have just granted them permission to do this stuff, so you can't later claim (when your lawyer explains things to you) that their investigation was unlawful. The whole scheme is based around conning you into granting them permission without realising it.
What you should have done was:
(1) instruct them to get off your property
(2) give them the name of your lawyers, and instruct them to refer all further correspondance there
(3) if they are still here, call the police and tell them you need some trespassers removing
Then you can have a nice leisurely discussion with your lawyers and figure out what, if anything, you actually need to do. Most likely they will tell you that you don't need to do anything unless the BSA has actual evidence of infringement.
Under no circumstances should you ever allow anybody to search your premesis unless they are holding a warrant and they are an officer of the law. The BSA themselves will never, ever have the right to do this because they are not the police.
As for those 'rules' they have about having to show the invoices? They made those up. They have no legal standing. The BSA has to prove that you are breaking the law, not the other way around. Then you merely have to show anything that proves them wrong. "Innocent until proven guilty" applies.
But don't take my word for it. If you are in a managerial role in a company and you are not absolutely sure about this stuff, go and talk to your lawyers and ask them for precise written instructions about what you should do if this stuff happens. Then distribute those instructions to all your management staff.
The BSA is like a mail worm infestation: it's far better to block them at the firewall than to try and clean up the mess once you let them get onto your network.
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.
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
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.
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.
The words are not patented. Nor are their styled likenesses, though the likenesses are Trade Marked wrt the FIFA World Cup. There's a difference. I suggest you read up on the difference between copyrights, trade marks and patents.
As for colours, pantones have been protected since their creation in the '60s. Nothing new there.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.