Typophile

Font Piracy solutions.

Dalveer Mann0 votes

Why are type foundries more intent on catching people who use pirated fonts rather than catching those make them available in the first place. There is a website dedicated to providing free Helvetica and Gotham fonts, why dont they do something about that rather than catching some lone, broke designer. Yeah it is illegal but doing something about it is ineffective and inefficient. Why not just try stopping the websites that distribute these fonts for free. Maybe you will scare some people who use these fonts but that is it about it. You just wasted a whole lot of time pursuing one offender and what are you gonna get out of it ? Pretty much nothing. So why not try to cut off the root of this problem.

And just so it is known, I appreciate the time and hard work type designers put into typefaces but why not try better ways to protect your rights. What do you guys think? Any suggestions on how to stop this.

dumpling0 votes

No, the real root of the problem is that Helvetica is a de facto standard typeface, yet (56 years after its design!) it is proprietary.

Can one design a font to seriously compete with Helvetica without being taken to court for "copying" Helvetica? In other words, you want it to be enough like Helvetica to work in the same sort of places people use Helvetica, but not be too much like Helvetica, because then that would be stealing.

Anyway, if you're going to steal a font, at least steal one in which capital I and lowercase l don't collide. (Who was Kim Jong the Second?) And while you're at it, check that the digit 6 is not a wannabe 8.

Si_Daniels0 votes

>Why are type foundries more intent on catching people who use pirated fonts rather than catching those make them available in the first place.

It's purely economics. Graphic designers and their clients are infinitely more likely to cough up some fees compared to the operators of the off-shore warez site, especially if the alternative is damage to their reputation or the threat of a law-suit.

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