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Font Maker Sues Universal Music Over 'Pirated' The Vamps Logo (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Universal Music Group is being sued by HypeForType, which accuses the record label of using "pirated" copies of its fonts for the logo of The Vamps. The font is widely used for artwork, promotion material and merchandising of the popular British band, and the font creator is looking for a minimum of $1.25 million in damages. The font maker has filed a lawsuit accusing the major label of using its "Nanami Rounded" and "Ebisu Bold" fonts without permission. According to a complaint, filed in a New York federal court, Universal failed to obtain a proper license for its use, so they are essentially using pirated fonts.
To save our mother Earth from any alien attack
From vicious giant insects who have once again come back
We'll unleash all our forces, we won't cut them any slack
The EDF deploys!
Our soldiers are prepared for any alien threats
The navy launches ships, the air force send their jets
And nothing can withstand our fixed bayonets
The EDF deploys!
Our forces have now dwindled and we pull back to regroup
The enemy has multiplied and formed a massive group
We better beat these bugs before we're all turned to soup
The EDF deploys!
To take down giant insects who came from outer space
We now head underground, for their path we must retrace
And find their giant nest and crush the queen's carapace
The EDF deploys!
The air force and the navy were destroyed or cast about
Scouts, rangers, wing divers have almost been wiped out
Despite all this the infantry will stubbornly hold out
The EDF deploys!
Our friends were all killed yesterday, as were our families
Today we might not make it, facing these atrocities
We'll never drop our banner despite our casualties
The EDF deploys!
Two days ago my brother died, next day my lover fell
Today most everyone was killed, on that we must not dwell
But we will never leave the field, we'll never say farewell
The EDF deploys!
A legendary hero soon will lead us to glory
Eight years ago he sunk the mothership says history
Tomorrow we will follow this brave soul to victory
The EDF deploys!
"But our piracy is different! We're a big corporation, we're allowed to do this!!!"
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
"And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day." â"Matthew 11:23
Woe unto the inhabitants of America!!! Americans are GUILTY! We have become a stiffnecked nation of child murderers, fornicators, liars, idolaters, Bible-corrupters, whores, homosexuals, pornographers, promise breakers, feminists, drunkards, gamblers and perverts.
Idolatrous Celebrity Worship!
Celebrity worship is IDOLATRY! We even admit to idolatry in America... AMERICAN IDOL! Do a web search under "American idol, American idols, idol" and see what come up... CELEBRITIES!
Exodus 20:4-5 (the second of the Ten Commandments) couldn't be any more clear... "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God..." Did you see that word... JEALOUS? Do you think God isn't jealous when you think about movie actors and rock stars all day? But you say, "Wait a minute, I don't worship any celebrities as a god."
Oh really? Women all across America are rushing to get plastic surgery and breast implants so they can look like their favorite celebrity on TV. Everything from the clothes people wear to the cars they drive nowadays are affected by Hollywood. People's minds are absolutely saturated with celebrities! I'd call that idol worship.
People's minds are consumed with celebrities of all sorts, from music to movies. Does anyone care about the Word of God anymore? A lot of people SAY they care about God, but then hypocritically despise, reject, and loathe God's Word... Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me" (Mark 7:6). Americans are living in denial.
Here's a news article addressing the problem of CWS (i.e., Celebrity Worship Syndrome):
One-third of worldâ(TM)s population suffers from 'celebrity worship syndrome'!
Everybody seems to have heard the phrase âoeThou shall not make unto thee any graven imageâ (The Bible, Exodus, 20, 4). Lots of people are in agreement on the point. An idol is frequently associated either with a gilded statue of some deity or a sweaty rock star rushing about the stage in a frenzy. The characters are useless in terms of practical application. Some peculiarities of the meaning of the word âoeidolâ enable true idols to stay in the shade.
The point is that not only certain persons can be seen as idols; money can be frequently idolized too. The end can assume the role of a gilded statute (the end effortlessly justifies the means in this case). In other words, an idol is bigger than a certain person, object or phenomenon. An idol has more to do with our attitude toward things we idolize.
For example, there is a girl who treats the personality and work of Marilyn Monroe with great admiration. The girl believes the actress was a beautiful woman, a clever one, the epitome of femininity. Then the girl starts taking radical steps in order to look like the woman of her dreams. She peroxides her hair. Dying oneâ(TM)s hair is not a blameworthy act; lots of teenage girls often change the color of their hair. Some time later the girl makes an appointment in a plastic surgery clinic. She wants to have the shape of her lips changed so that she may look even more like her
Live by the DMCA...die by the DMCA
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
They bought a license, but not a "commercial scale" license.
Please don't tempt them. Ever since it was shown that Google et al have survived thanks to safe harbor provisions, that's been a target. Anything to prompt them to lobby against it more than they currently are is a bad idea, imho.
Is he claiming each letter is one count of violation? Like RIAA typically does?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Basically the label will just take the money from the artists proceeds. Done and done.
Ha ha ha... ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!... ha.
Universal designed the logo. Some graphic design firm did, and they may or may not have had a suitable licence, (my guess is not, but basically "prove it.")
While I'm all for rooting for the little guy, the idea of maintaining some "chain of custody" for every typeface used in a piece of work, which may incorporate material and logos from dozens of different brands is beyond impractical. Especially when for the most part fonts "just work" for nearly all people, nearly all of the time unless they've got the no-embed bit set.
Since font shapes cannot be copyrighted, they will have a tough time proving that their own ttf file (which can be copyrighted) was used unlawfully. If universal claimed the font was not the font maker's font, I suppose they could demand to see the ttf file, and probably a judge would go along with it. And who's to say that universal couldn't have asked a third party to make the logo who had access to the font ttf file.
You seem to forgot that Jesus main message is :
1-Do to others as you would have them do to you
2-the new testament replace the old
So now, the music labels will find a loophole that allows them to use other people's IP without permission or payment.
Then, inevitably, someone else will use this same strategy against them,
And that whole house of cards, built on a sandbar, could come tumbling down.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Doesn't make the monetary demand any less absurd because it is not the RIAA/MPAA filing the suit. Used without proper licensing? Yes, give reasonable damages. Not 100X more than what it would cost to hire and buy a font outright from an experienced typographer.
While fonts themselves can be copyrighted, the typeface itself that is rendered by a font cannot be. So it is, in fact, entirely possible to create a lookalike font to a copyrighted font without infringing on the copyright on the latter as long as the lookalike font itself was not actually copied from the the copyrighted font.
In general (but not always), this means that the lookalike font was created from samples of text that use the original font, specifically text that only a utilizes a subset of the font, and a font designer would apply the patterns used in the characters within that sample to extrapolate the design of the remaining characters. Often, the end result can be virtually indistinguishable to almost anyone visually unless one knows exactly what to look for, and in exactly which glyphs. An excellent example of just how similar typefaces can be without infringing on copyright is to compare the typefaces Helvetica, Grotesque, and Arial.
In the case of something like a logo, the number of character samples can be often small enough that no differences will be detectable to the human eye at all.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
When Jammie Thomas got no profit and only infringed 21 titles and was found guilty for 2.2m in damages, this really is far far too small to be justified. It should be 1.2m ABOVE the total revenue from the movies.
ttf files, not tiff. Maybe you are rendering in a font that makes this disambiguation difficult?
This seems to me like a compelling argument for never licensing a commercial font, and just using the large and growing pool of free fonts.
Much as my personal policy for software is that if there is FOSS that can solve my problem, I try to use that even if there is something better that costs money. I don't even want to have to keep track of how many copies I have installed, how many backups I have made, etc.
That "Vamps" logo is pretty straightforward, and I'll bet it wouldn't be that hard to find some free font that would look about as nice.
Another good option: pay a free-lance artist (or even an art-college student) to design the logo, with a clear contract saying there will be no royalties.
As others have noted, the music labels are in the business of charging royalties and it's stupid for one to step on a licensing landmine like this.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Iirc, while a font (the .TTF file with the instructions for the computer on how to draw the font) can be copyrighted, a typeface (the visual representation of the font) cannot...
So unless they were including the TTF files as part of digital downloads, they may be in the clear?
https://torrentfreak.com/tvadd...
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I went and had a look at the two typefaces on HypeForType, typed in "VAMPS" and compared that to the logo. They are noticably different in several ways:
* The logo's "V" inside the M doesnt touch the baseline
* The crossbar on the "A" in the logo is higher than either of the contested typefaces.
* The curve on the "P" has a similar radius, but the X/Y Aspect is different.
So... yeah... I don't know why this lawsuit is even a thing.
Where do i post my address to received my btcc
They have no case. Fonts are not copyrightable. Only font files.
Instead of using people's tax dollars for courts, can't they just settle on a shared profit percentage??
Matthew 5:18
"For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled."
Never have i seen such a long shitpost...