Well, he’s dead now.

David, it is a no-no to post links to sites like that. :^o

Shouldn’t we just delete the whole thread? Popping into these threads only to see that the issue we’re discussing has been removed seems silly.

But you posted. ;^)

> Shouldn’t we just delete the whole thread?

No, if you let the thread itself stay it serves nicely as notice.

hhp

Hornets.
Delete thread if could.

Don’t worry about it, David.

Hrant is right in that this is a good way to let others know where we, Typophile, stand on posting links to pirated font sites.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

Do you remove Links To AGFA, MONOTYPE, BERTHOLD (Who with the font Standard have done a first I know of, Pirate their own font!), BITSTREAM, LINOTYPE, among others? FRYS CASLON? Oh, I almost forgot that little known California Company too, ADOBE? They have all donned the eye cap numerous times. You refuse to call all of the sin, sin. This revisionism is what creates ignorance. Was the link to a possible low-life? I cannot say… but now I can’t make up my mind.

It seems to me the issue is pretty simple, Typophile exists because there is a need for a very high end of user. There exists on this plane very much excellent work and thought. But the elephant in the room is piracy at all levels of this industry and when it starts to get fairly acknowledged it can then be dealt with. If we asses blame to Softmaker or Brendel or SSI, then where is the outrage at Bitstream? Bitstreams core fonts are highly derrivative and they charged alot of money, not $59.99.
Do you all stand behind Bitsreams EULA? Is it original work? I realize I am treading on thin ice because Mr. Matthew Carter is among the best, but is what Bistream do right, or any less bad than PRIMAFONT? Is Cronos any worse than Palazzo original(well yes, but that may be just me!)?

I guess what I am saying is, where is the guidline here? Do you profess to hate all piracy? If so then typophile has built a bad foundation and the house will suffer because of it.

The Truth shall set you free

Humans work with thresholds, personal and inconstant.

hhp

But hopefully not systematic.

The Truth shall set you free

Actually, freedom sets people free. The truth is nice, too, but it is not sufficiently well represented in your rants.

T

I protest the way this is being handled. Education is infinitely better than censorship.

The other thing I’d like to say about this before hoisting my low resolution fraction bar and lancing this boil is: this is not The Waitress. These particular Pie Rats are outside of the realm of US IP laws. As such, I am outside of their law, but before I acquire their fonts, QA them for the localizations they’ve done and...somethin’ else, I’d like to know if anyone knows who they are? In the past, pressure from other locals has worked, but first, and with all due respect to the founders and shakers of this forum, we must talk.

Thomas, please use proof to show I am wrong and am ranting, not making fun of my signature line, which is pretty weak. I think you misread passion for ranting here.

The history of typography is colorful and full of piracy, that is the truth. Innovation has been much of the hallmark of piracy (Compugraphic, Bitstream, URW and Adobe come to mind) and yeah there are scumbags along the way, but the innovation hopefully will shine through. But what if Brendel some how had stumbled into either great innovation or art? Would they be discounted by Typophile? And what if any of the Big name founderies starts a dismal fall, will they be proped up by Typophile, and for how long?

If you live in a nice little bubble and try to hide from the FACT that every player in the font business, regardless of position, has pirated and say “No piracy here” what are you really doing? Oh make the bad boys go away. It is true that there are street theives and museum theives and they may be a different class, but their act is the same. I don’t think Softmaker would have the audacity to call any pirates “Originals” either.

At one time I had ~1200 fonts for Linotronic 202(including the phantom “SuperFonts”), 2300 fonts for L-300, the original Adobe type library, and 1000+ fonts for Filmotype, previous to that my family used VIPs, Diatronic and Hot Metal Linotype machines. Yeah that is quite a lot of fonts, time and money invested into the industry. I tell you this backround because I have some very intimate knowledge of fonts, the font business and typography, which I love.

The Truth shall set you free

Rodrique, I think you are oversimplifying the history and the current situation to a point where misrepresents what is at issue.

If Bitream did their own Baskerville and Caslon and Bodoni and these closely resembled earlier versions, including Monotype and Linotype, was is piracy or not? This is a debatable issue. Part of debate is that the originator was by then long dead, and that the Mono and Lino versions were themselves revivals. Of course when we go to Gill Sans, the question becomes a bit more difficult. When it comes to Palatino—Book Antiqua, that seems to me to go over the line.

The case here I believe includes digital fonts that are also being marketed with royalties to originator of the font. And someone has just copied the digital file and is selling it cut-rate or giving it away with no royalties to the originator. To me there is no debate here, it is just theft. My opinion, but also the court’s opinion in many countries. Not being a lawyer, I don’t know how many.

William, Bitstream used Linotype Fonts as the basis for their own library, some say much better than Linotype.

Case and point Basic Commercial is Azkindenz Grotesk, shouldn’t Linotype be taken to task by us? Palazzo Original is the digitized version of Palatino (Stempel), which is the only way we can get it, alas, from Softmaker. So in this case, who is worse?
Also, by your standard, Adobe is ripping off the designer or Today Sans with Coronos (An Adobe original?), right?
I think that URW Nimbus Sans was credited to Max Miedinger instead of ripping off helvetica straight out, which to me is more fair.

The Truth shall set you free

What are we saying here? That Myriad is a forgery of Frutiger? Or, at some point, are designers simply faced with nowhere to turn for “innovation” unless they turn letters into something bizarre and unrecognizable?

After a time, one simply cannot stray from creating a face that is in some way, derivative. Yes, Dederon Serif looks quite a bit like Dolly, and certainly, some of the versions of Baskerville out there look nearly identical, but then, what else whould they have looked like to begin with?

Try something. Draw the letter “B.” But make it legible, somehting fit for reading at smaller point sizes, ideal for long tracts of text. Nothing too fancy, but don’t make it too plain, either. Chances are, you’ve just created a forgery.

I was surprised not by Typophiles stance on font theft but I was quite surprised by their deletion of the offending link. I think we got off on the wrong track here because of the word pirates. Piracy is different than font theft. I assume David’s use of the word Pirates was in reference to the infamous BitTorrent site. BitTorrent “sharing” technology and the ethics of that is not some dirty family secret that needs to be swept under the rug but rather openly discussed.

Rodrigue, slogans are just a lazy way of thought and are manipulative. Arbeit macht frei, for instance.

Gerald

I was quite surprised by their deletion of the offending link.

You should not be surprised, on the Read Me page, it states: Typophile moderators reserve the right to edit or remove any posts or links that they deem inappropriate.
As moderators, we all agree that links to sites where commercial fonts are available to be downloaded for free, fall under the category of “inappropriate” and will always be removed when found on typophile.

Like Paul Cutler just wrote elsewhere: “Intent is everything.”

hhp

Gerald, you are too kind to me, really! Did I say slogan or signature? How do I know what link? That got pulled.
My general disgust is that here on a forum of the top “Typophiles”, that piracy is rampant and has been for so long and systematic. There are a set of companies who get beat up and others who are lauded as “Untouchable.” The worst part is that to bring up the idea that the “Top Guns” are covered in slime then get such a chilling response from these forums speaks volumes of why fonts are regarded (and in many cases rightly so) as a mere commodity.
If Adobe, Linotype and other big font companies steal, where should the rest of the industry go? So then when designers do not get paid for fonts, don’t they already know who they are dealing with?

The Truth shall set you free

I’m not going to bother debating with you. You can believe what you like - it’s mostly for the benefit of others reading that I’m taking a stand on this.

I’ve known Robert Slimbach for almost ten years, and he’s been my mentor in typeface design for the last several years. This may give me a bias, but it also means that I know whereof I speak. I do not believe that Robert has imitated or would ever deliberately imitate any existing typeface without full credit. When he does a revival he is very clear about it.

In my 9.5 years at Adobe, the company has taken the high road with regards to not doing derivative typeface designs, even when there have been very strong business incentives to do otherwise. When somebody has suggested doing something of dubious ethicality in this area, standing up and objecting has always drawn the endorsement of upper management.

The last time I had a serious ethical concern about a strategic issue related to type at Adobe, I let the appropriate people know, even though the thought occurred to me that placing ethics over business might be a “career-limiting move,” as they say.

So what happened? My concerns were forwarded to president and COO Shantanu Narayen, and he reportedly said “gee, the guy’s got a point, go re-examine that issue” (or words to that effect). A couple of weeks later a senior VP dropped by my office to chat about the problem, essentially to reassure me that the issue would be dealt with and not ignored as I had feared. At the end of the conversation he basically asked me, by the way, would I be interested in a promotion?

So it wasn’t a career-limiting move, after all. Mostly I felt embarrassed that I had seriously underestimated the ethics of the upper management of the company.

Regards,

T

Thomas Phinneys response is exactly what I meant by chilling response to bringing up piracy. You may not like my point of view, but can you substantively tell me that any of the fonts I have mentioned here were not taken?
A central issue here is that the big guys only have to screw up once and it is tough. I am not saying in any fashion that All of any font library is a rip-off, but not even concedeing that hmmmm some fonts might not be kosher is not right.

The Truth shall set you free

Two quick points -

1. Revivals - http://www.emigre.com/Editorial.php?sect=2&id=1
John Downer - doesn’t he say it all?

2. The Internet - http://www
Doesn’t the Web mean that it would be impossible for a new outfit to build a library using the ’traditional method’ without a grass-roots opposition from typographers and graphic designers, that would render the whole endeavor a waste of time?

Everyone that’s been in this business more than ten years has a skeleton or three in the closet, but in general there’s peaceful co-existence, and most people can collaborate on projects despite these things in their past.

Rodrigue

I suspect that the imitation of typefaces was the nature of typeface development right from the get go, the mid-15th century. Exact replication became far more feasible with the development of pantograph machine (used in wood type) and then the camera and photographic film but during the metal years that followed it was more often still a case of modification rather wholesale copying. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery or something like that. The exact slogan eludes me.

It really was the photofilm/analog computer years that the piracy that you are discussing became rampant. And then on to the digital years where the effort spent in copying is nearly nil and has led us to this very significant problem.

Still I would suggest that even though the established commercial type manufacturers may have different names of otherwise identical or near identical typefaces, they may very well have licensed the right to do that. They really can’t afford the legal costs that could result if they do not do so. Though I’m sure examples can be brought up that would prove specifically otherwise in certain instances. I know that Adobe spent (pre-2000, I’ve not had any business contact with them since) an inordinate amount of time just checking to verify that no one had ever even used the name of the typeface before; I kind of doubt that they would in any way risk just copying a competitor’s design.

Gerald

The Emigre article is good, but not good enough.

hhp

I didn’t remove the link to keep you, David, from find out who the pirates are, so much as removing it to keep others from downloading the fonts. I wish we did have a formal way to protect and serve, but the most I can do is remove the link.

Apololgies, but I don’t have time to justify an answer to the other questions.

Rodrigue,

I am telling you now that you are wrong about Adobe, substantively.

You are parroting some bile that someone else spewed re: Cronos being derivative of Today. Don’t believe everything you see on the internet. That writer, and you, are ignoring a pretty big elephant. I challenge you to get both typefaces, print them out, and compare them. Even better, I suggest you overlay them in Illustrator, or FontLab. You should finally notice that they are not similar in construction, finish, proportion, spacing, or any other detail. They have in common that they are humanist sans designs. That is all. In that sense, either one of them could be said to be “suspiciously similar” to Gill, Syntax, Agenda, Bliss, Kievit..... the list goes on. It’s a category of typeface, there’s no piracy, there’s not even a derivation. One has only to look clearly to see this. As others have pointed out, the very idea that Robert Slimbach would even be bothered to rip off another design is insane. He has far too much skill and talent for that. This campaign was devised as a retaliation and is not well-motivated. Let it go. pursuing that topic weakens your argument.

Your complaint about Adobe seems founded on this alone. From what I know of Adobe (and I’ve worked in the type department there), their library is one of the most legal, legitimate, and completely licensed ones in the world. You’re way off base.

Your point is well taken; there has been piracy in the font business since it was a business. We all know that. I think Tiffany and Paul made it abundantly clear that Typophile has always had a policy of not providing URLs to sites that seem illegitimate or suspicious. If they misjudge a site, then surely it will not stay hidden, and there’s no harm done. Typophile’s policies aren’t powerful enough to globally condone or hinder piracy, or the discussion of it. It doesn’t censor the owner of the site, it doesn’t restrict anyone from voicing their opinion, and it doesn’t prevent you from finding out about questionable sites if you wish.

You have made an uninformed generalization. Yes, piracy is rampant. No, every single type company is not wallowing in pure pirate gold. Look deeper.

“Thomas Phinneys response is exactly what I meant by chilling response to bringing up piracy.”

If you’re going to use inappropriate loaded rhetoric, can you at least use it properly? That’s “chilling effect,” not “chilling response.” Please explain how you have been harmed by my statements. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect

“You may not like my point of view, but can you substantively tell me that any of the fonts I have mentioned here were not taken?”

I have no idea what “substantively tell me” even means. And of course it’s nigh-impossible to prove a negative. But if you’re going to make the accusations of wrongdoing, the burden of proof is on you.

(Edit/note: I have only written about Cronos and other designs by Robert Slimbach, and on the side about Adobe type in general. Like Carl, I do not dispute that there has been a lot of piracy in the type industry.)

Pfeh. Allowed myself to be dragged into the debate. Note to self: must continue to ignore trolls. Not worth the time and effort, just makes people think their silliness is worth taking seriously.

T

“remove Links To AGFA, MONOTYPE, BERTHOLD, BITSTREAM, LINOTYPE, among others?

Oh Geeze, a typophile has broken out. The above listed companies know better than to put trademarked and copyrighted software on their sites. The unmentionables have graciously asked for a list of the infringements. I only asked this list to see if it was likely that they might respond favorably to a compadre, or if they needed a lawyer. That is usually the first step for anyone who believes that hiring a lawyer means you’ve already lost. If this basic research cannot be done here, it can be elsewhere, no big deal. And thanks for all.

Cheers!

I am willing to accept looking at both fonts (Today Sans and Cronos) in FontStudio and if my assesment is off I will gladly say so. I think to I will look at Book Antiqua and Palatino (Adobe) as well, among others.
Actually, I think it could at least make a darned good article.
Thomas, I don’t take your personal put downs to heart, but you may want to stop looking in the mirror. Perhaps you should take yourself a little less serious.

Rodi
The Truth shall set you free

Rodrigue:

You made your point several posts ago. Now you’re getting personal. There is a galaxy of difference between bringing to light a legitimate issue, and taking shots at Mr. Phinney. I think crossgrove had the last word on this issue, anyway. Besides, the moral aspect of typeface forgery, and forgery in a historical context for that matter, is in fact quite blurry. Throw in the *fact* that those you accuse today have all the legal dispensation they need to continue operating as they have, and you’ll quickly find that at the very least, your line of argument is more difficult to pursue than you had thought.

When I’m among friends, I drop the argument when I see it becoming personal. Tact is everything. Exercising it in this case means that the comfort and friendship of otherwise good people is more important to you than a line of argument.

Palantine,
He called me a troll, and I responded much more friendly than his barb.
The Truth shall set you free

Thomas, I think you’re being a little bit too defensive.

Carl: talent and skill are great, but no substitute for a possible lack of original thought (and the possibly resultant inferiority complex, which could trigger unethical action). Warnock, however, is a valid counter-argument.

> If this basic research cannot be done here, it can be elsewhere

Typophile once proposed a “trusted member” scheme/subforum - if that ever comes about it would be THE place for this sort of thing.

hhp

“possible lack of original thought (and the possibly resultant inferiority complex, which could trigger unethical action)”

This is still ignoring the elephant though. And paranoid.

The elephant: I’ve done the comparison; matching control points is one thing, not giving credit to a notable source of inspiration is another (and different people will find one or the other more offensive). But anyway I wasn’t alluding to one typeface but an œuvre*; and “paranoid” can’t be the right word here - for one thing, I’m personally much more concerned with progressive cultural contribution than I am with minor plagiarism (of which virtually nobody is innocent).

* It remains, for example, that to me the best face in the entire Adobe Originals collection -and probably the entire Adobe library- is Jamra’s Kinesis-MM.

hhp

>Jamra’s Kinesis

...which as we learned from Jamra at TypeCon is one of the most chirographically-inspired recent fonts. So you, Hrant, will no doubt instantly renounce one of your long held pet hates... :)

I also love Ex Ponto - so much so that I bought it.
And I also love lard, but I don’t pretend it’s a good staple food.

If you think I hate chirography, you’re reading me incorrectly.

hhp

Hrant

Wouldn’t have thought you had an interest in Ex Ponto. Back in the PostScript Type 1 days Bieler Press was an occasional beta site for Adobe and I did some of the beta testing (not much) on Ex Ponto and the really cool thing was that when it was all said and done Jovica Veljovic sent me the specimen book and very graciously (and I might add beautifully) signed it over as a nice personal touch.

Alas, those days are long gone. No more print specimen books, no more MM, no more of the personal touch.

Gerald

>Alas, those days are long gone.

Are you seriously talking about Adobe!? Or someone else?

>No more print specimen books,

Garamond Premier Pro book

>no more MM,

Alive and well in font production tools

>no more of the personal touch.

Ever heard of Tom Phinney?

Nice well put together response.

Well. . .

Seriously.

Is there an actual printed specimen book available or just a PDF?

MM doesn’t do the end user any good as a component of FontLab.

Does Tom send nice hand written notes to folks like Carol Trombley does?

Gerald

>Is there an actual printed specimen book available or just a PDF?

My understanding is that the book is only available in print due to some permissions issue with images used in the book.

>MM doesn’t do the end user any good as a component of FontLab.

Well, it helps type designers make extended families, something graphic designers want. That’s good for end users, of type and of the products produced with type.

>Does Tom send nice hand written notes to folks like Carol Trombley does?

Al Gore recently invented the Internet - rendering hand written notes largely obsolete. My guess is that Tom sends seventy to one hundred times more hand-typed emails than Carol sent hand written notes.

I am willing to accept looking at both fonts (Today Sans and Cronos) in FontStudio and if my assesment is off I will gladly say so. I think to I will look at Book Antiqua and Palatino (Adobe) as well, among others.

I have looked at Today Sans and Cronos side-by-side and overlaid and what they have in common is a similarity of weight and proportion, such that when you print a page of text at, say, 10pt in Today Sans and the same page of text in Cronos at the same size, the overall appearence of the two pages is very similar. But if you compare individual letterforms, and especially compare the fonts at larger sizes, what is most apparent are the many differences. Apart from anything else, the gentle detailing of Cronos is such that I’ve always considered it primarily a display face, while Today Sans is better suited to smaller sizes because it is not so soft. As I understand it, Adobe listed Today Sans as ’prior art’ in their design patent application, i.e. as an acknowledged design in a similar style along with, I presume, other humanist sans such as Gill Sans (to which Today Sans bears a stronger resemblance than Cronos). My conclusion was that Cronos had very similar proportions to Today Sans and clearly belonged to the same idiom, but was not a clone or a pirated copy. It belongs to the class of types — and there are many — that have been developed to competetively exploit a market that has already been identified or established by another company. I think Myriad is another such example. This isn’t limited to type design: it occurs in lots of different kinds of products from kitchenware to automobiles (products in which intellectual property protection is very much stronger than for type design, so in which the concept of what constitutes illegitimate copying and what constitutes legitimate competetive products is much more clearly defined — one of the problems with the lack of good IP protection in type is that private opinion and interpretation runs rampant, with no legal and ethical standard against which to be measured). I think there often is an ’unpleasant taste’ in the development of some competetive products, which, even if not illegal or strictly unethical, offend our sense of the respect that is due to the product that first establishes the market. So, for example, I am less impressed by the various automobiles clearly influenced by the design of the Audi TT than I am by the Audi TT itself, even though none of them are copies per se and some of them are interesting cars in their own right. For those who know and care about such things, the obvious thing to do is to vote with one’s chequebook or credit card and purchase the product that you respect more.

Regarding Book Antiqua, this is a clone of Palatino, and no one claims otherwise. Adobe’s Palatino is licensed from Linotype, perfectly legitimately.

What Bitstream did was a Very Very Bad Thing that continues to be a bone of contention in the type community, even though Bitstream and Linotype signed a deal in 2003 that ostensibly legitimises the Bitstream clones of Linotype fonts.

The truth will indeed set you free, but first you have to seek it, for the sake of truth and freedom, not as a stick to beat other people with.

> the book is only available in print

I got a copy of the new Garamond with my InDesign.
Am I entitled to the booklet?

hhp

>Am I entitled to the booklet?

No justice ;-) there were copies in the TypeCon goody bags.

Huds:
“What Bitstream did was a Very Very Bad Thing...”

“The truth will indeed set you free, but first you have to seek it,”

“No, if you let the thread itself stay it serves nicely as notice.”

A notice of what?

Well, whatever, clearly these threads become the longest even though we’re not talking about anything. So, carry on! ;o)

Proof that Adobe is a pirate.

They use exactly the same 26 letters that Ottmar put onto the Linotype over 100 years ago. Why, that must be copying.

:)

“I didn’t remove the link to keep you, David, from find out who the pirates are, so much as removing it to keep others from downloading the fonts.”

But that’s an misguided reason to censor.

2 seconds on google can find a copy of nearly every font out there. People aren’t stupid. I highly doubt there are people hitting REFRESH on typophile waiting for that one thread that links to a questionable site so they can rush off and download all the fonts.

It smells of paranoia more than anything.

Seems to me that a better way to educate folks is to leave the link, then explain why the site in question is wrong.

But, that’s just me.

On the other hand, every link to a site takes it higher on Google’s results.

>very, very bad ...
>first you have to seek it ...

Is the Bitstream vs Linotype story told anywhere? Can it be without the tellers putting themselves in legal jeopardy?

What I have read on the ever-reliable internet:

Bitstream, the first all-digital font company, was founded by Mike Parker and Matthew Carter. Both were British ex-pats in the US and both had worked at Linotype, Parker as Director of Typography.

Parker and Carter are unlikely-looking as a pair to be cast in the role of pirates, as both have a strong aura of ’English gentleman’ about them.

I haven’t read any clear story, but what I have gathered from earlier comments on Typophile is that the ’unpleasantness’ has something to do with Bitstream trying to work out an agreement with their former company, and it falling through. Parker left Bitstream in 87 and Carter in 91. In 2003 Bitstream acquired Linotype licenses for their designs that resembled Lino fonts, and at the same time they concluded an agreement to sell Lino fonts on their site MyFonts.

Guys, I know I need to get more sleep, but not at 9 in the morning, please.

hhp

Darrel, the point is that if people want to get copies of fonts illegally that is there problem. Typophile does not condone font sharing. Full stop.

In regards to people being stupid, well I know I’m not stupid enough to assume that other people are stupid, but if they are looking for copies of fonts for free I think that is debatable. ;^}

“Typophile does not condone font sharing. Full stop.”

I don’t think anyone assumes they are. Can’t one discuss a topic without condoning it?

“In regards to people being stupid”

I was saying people AREN’T stupid.

But, if they are, then no harm, as stupid people aren’t going to be much of a threat to the type industry anyways. ;o)

One may discuss a topic without condoning it. I don’t think I’ve said that one cannot. I have said that one cannot post a link (or an obvious hint) toward finding an illegal copy.

Yes. I mean “aren’t” as well.

ChrisL

1) Chris, you got it wrong, matey: it’s September 19th, not September 11th. Check with sii. He knows.

2) Tiffany: you have stated Typophile’s position about linking to the Evil People a couple or three times in this thread. Eventually we’ll get it. :-)

3) Darrel: I agree with your last bunch of postings. To be an ostrich is NOT a good thing. How do we get Typophile to get their head out of the sand?

I first thought this thread was distined to an early (watery) grave, arrrrr. All we had was a question from David and a deleted link. Now we’ve got two pages of discussion. That makes all readers more aware of piracy than we were a week ago.

“How do we get Typophile to get their head out of the sand?”

You don’t. You let it go. Bigger battles and all that.. ;o)

Tiffany

There are other concerns as well. BitTorrent is a legitimate transfer technology. In the wrong neighborhood though your computer could very quickly be “compromised.” So it is just not a matter of saying don’t do it, this is a bad thing, but more don’t do it, you could get hurt.

Yeah, this should be talked about before someone thinks downloading (sharing) the entire Adobe OT collection is a good thing and there are no consequences other than the legal, if caught (in California, $10,000 and a prison term).

Gerald

Censorship only exists when one believes that access to certain information is dangerous or that a particular population - namely, professional graphic designers, type designers and typesetters - are not mature enough to use or view it responsibly. I cannot see any other rational reason for it. Emotional reasons and/or religious reasons, sure; but not rational reasons.

“it’s September 19th, not September 11th”

Ken, can I postdate that check?
:-)

ChrisL

Ken, can I postdate that check?

Sure! (that’s the one you are sending me, right??)

(Moderator hat slightly removed just in case I say something not nice.)

Look, Typophile is a public forum. Based on that I don’t know who is roaming the halls here. If I knew without a shadow of a doubt that everyone here would do the responsible thing then I would’ve left the original link posted by David and perhaps we could’ve helped him find out who the “evil people” were. However, I don’t know that everyone can be trusted. The regulars here, more than likely, but the roamers, no ... sorry.

Bit Torrent is a great thing. Public file sharing is a great thing. It is how they are being used that is not so great.

I’ll say it again for the peanut gallery. Typophile does not condone any form of illegal file sharing. Be it a link to a torrent, a link to another website, or an overt hint to either.

David,

There have been many precedents of people posting links to downloads of stolen fonts (for free). It’s always been our policy to delete the link and leave the thread as evidence of our collective zero tolerance for those sites. I realize that what you’re doing is fundamentally different, but it still would let other’s (including Google and it’s cache) perpetuate the link.

Is there another way to share this information without sharing a URL? Maybe not, but I’m open to trying.

__
Roderigue and others,

Has this thread jumped the shark yet?

ChrisL

I want to apologize to Thomas Phinney. My main intent on this was that with so many big founderies being competitive that at different time through the course of graphic arts history fonts have been copied or loosely pirated. I never meant to say all fonts from any library was a pirated thing. I have a tough way some times that may come off better in person, maybe not.
Thomas I am sorry that I offended you and I regret my words toward you and your company. I give you my promise that I will in the future hold my typing fingers. I won’t be a party to the dreaded P!r@te topic again.
I have to remind myself that we all love fonts and are really trying to elevate font issues, which I dragged down on this. I am sorry for that.

The Truth shall set you free

Rodrigue

This is what I like about Typophile the most. When all is said and done (no matter what transpired) there is still the respect. That is my fourth characteristic of a type designer (you don’t want to know what the first three are).

Gerald

Comon Gerald, tell us the other 3?
:-)

ChrisL

Cheapness. I once complained that his little laserprinted booklet on ppl printing was too expensive at $25... The fact that I complained after having bought it had no impact apparently. But I forget what the remaining two are.

hhp

>Chris, you got it wrong, matey: it’s September 19th, not September 11th. Check with sii. He knows.

Yep, it’s comming up...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Talk_Like_a_Pirate_Day

OK Si, I will hold my belaying pin until next week
}b^{>

ChrisL

Chris, you perfect nerd; I’ve never seen a pirate emoticon before. Kudos.

I kinda thought I just invented it matey! Whoops!, can’t say matey until next week or Si will have me walk the plank!

ChrisL

Don’t start too early - unless you want to make an ar(gghhh)se of your self. P-)

Si, I don’t want to be walking the Planck Constantly, the mechanics would have to be kept in perfect order for that.

ChrisL

>MM doesn’t do the end user any good as a component of FontLab.

Well, it helps type designers make extended families, something graphic designers want. That’s good for end users, of type and of the products produced with type.

I had a discussion recently that fonts such as Univers, might be better off in this kind of format. Only problem is, many EULAs don’t permit this, but that’s another topic altogether...

“Is the Bitstream vs Linotype story told anywhere?”
“Mike Parker and Matthew Carter. Both were British ex-pats”

Mike Parker is not actually a Brit ex-pat. You’d have to ’ave heard his mother to understand the accent.

Bitstream vs Linotype began when Leonard Storch Enterprises won a suit allowing themselves to continue photocopying Linotype film fonts and selling them for less than the originals cost to make, which for Linotype was a lot, for Storch it cost nothing. In addition, slightly later on, Linotype agreed to produce bitmap screen fonts for Xerox, but declined to do the same for Scitex. So, when Linotype’s management and parent, Allied Chemical, decided also to cut the letterdrawing budget by an amount about equal to the salaries of the four top executives of the letterdrawing department, Bitstream was born. Those four knew that a type department was profittable.

Bitstream then proceeded to build a staff, tools and a library for typesetter, imagesetter and word processor manufacturers who could not get type otherwise, as Linotype and the other manufacturers would neither license to them, or Bitstream, and there were no other independant digital font foundries. None of the thousand digital outlines made for this purpose were compatible with Linotype’s versions, (except the monospaced), in either width or image and none were made to work on Linotype machines, until the later advent of PostScript, by which time, most of the Linotype library had been cloned by Adobe.

“Parker and Carter are unlikely-looking as a pair to be cast in the role of pirates”
Absolutely not. You’d have to make a pretty exact replica of an existing and profittable standard, rename it something, put it right back on the originators machinery, and have the financial resources to to do otherwise, to be cast as a pirate in my book.

well, since this thread has become a catch-all anyway, i’ll tack on my own bitstream question as it’s not too far off what the topic has become...
is there a listing anywhere of which bitstream fonts corespond with which originals? just curious.

Paul, I don’t know about Bitstream, but Agfa did that (like in the back of their thick black book). I actually found that pretty refreshing.

hhp

>is there a listing anywhere of which bitstream fonts corespond with which originals?

Maybe, but if you only want to look a particular font this info is posted at MyFonts...

Eg http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/bitstream/formal-436/

Formal 436

$24.75

————————————————————————————————————————

Design Credits
First seen on MyFonts: January 1st, 2000
Letterform design based on: Oscar
Contained in Categories: Decorative & Display, Script
Design owned by: Bitstream
Originally created by: Bitstream
MyFonts Keywords: calligraphy, decorative, disconnected, script [suggest]

There used to be a little application, under OS9, that showed you all the Bitstream fontnames next to the “proper” names. I forget what it is called. I’ll dig and see if I have it archived somehwere.

There’s a list of Bitstream > common names and vice versa on Luc Devroye’s site:

http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/jonpastor.txt

This list is derived from the data in the Bitstream desk accessory:

http://www.fontinfo.net/Font_Analog.html

>Absolutely not

Just to be clear, I was was saying that I found it extremely hard to believe that these fine fellows would do anything improper. So the ’very, very bad’ of John Hudson above is not accurate.

Thanks for the story. I would like to see a fuller version somewhere. This story is not in ’Printers Type in the Twentieth Century’, and it seems to me that it is an important part of the story. It strikes me that the ’80s were a critical time for digital type, as there was a lot of change, and decisions made then we are still living with for good or ill. These are decisions that relate both to drawing type and to digital rights.

For example: What format were Linotypes digital fonts in pre-bitstream? And was the “cloning” of Linotype’s fonts by Adobe done under license from Linotype, or were the current agreements worked out later?

I thinl Linotype and Adobe worked together on it.

ChrisL

“What format were Linotypes digital fonts in pre-bitstream?”
Digital fonts covers a lot of ground. The only things you could call digital outlines were 100 or so Ikarus fonts. They also had many machine formats that were either bitmaps or vectorized outlines. Most of the library was on paper and film with a 10” em was the standard font format for its unshrinkable scanabilities.

”...was the “cloning” of Linotype’s fonts by Adobe done under license from Linotype, or were the current agreements worked out later?”

In all but a few cases the cloning was under license from Linotype.

David: You’d have to make a pretty exact replica of an existing and profittable standard, rename it something, put it right back on the originators machinery, and have the financial resources to to do otherwise, to be cast as a pirate in my book.

So copying someone’s else’s designs without permission is okay so long as the replica isn’t exact and you make it for a different machinery and your excuse is that you don’t have the financial resources to do otherwise?

William: Just to be clear, I was was saying that I found it extremely hard to believe that these fine fellows would do anything improper. So the ‘very, very bad’ of John Hudson above is not accurate.

Thanks for the story.

Maybe you should also hear the story from some people on the Linotype side who were there at the time. Or those who negotiated the Linotype-Bitstream agreement to finally ’legitimise’ the clones a mere three years ago. Or maybe ask the designers whose typefaces were not licensed by Bitstream how they felt about other people profiting from their work while they received no royalties. The phrase ’very, very bad’ is a pretty mild to what you will hear from some people.

Regarding the ’fine fellows’, I like them very much, one-and-all. They are very knowledgeable and talented, and generous with both. They’ve all done things that have been very positive contributions to the type business. Matthew and David know more about designing type than most of the rest of us put together, and it would be hard not to be fond of Mike. I remember, during a presentation by a German copyright lawyer at ATypI Barcelona in 1995, Jonathan Hoefler wanted to draw attention to the naïvite of some of the speaker’s assumptions about the type business. So he raised his hand and said ’I’m sitting next to one of the biggest pirates in the history of type’. Mike laughed.

Being fine-fellows didn’t prevent them from cloning most of the Linotype library without permission and profiting from typeface designs without paying royalties to designers (some designers, including Hermann Zapf made agreements with Bitstream; others, including Adrien Frutiger) did not. But being fine fellows did get them forgiven more quickly than anyone else would have been, although the feeling at Linotype — I am told by someone who was there — was that Bitstream was legitimised by the industry much too soon.

...and have the financial resources to to do otherwise...

Sorry, I have to come back to this because I’m just gobsmacked. It’s not piracy if you can’t afford not to clone other peoples’ work? Is that like saying that stealing something isn’t theft if you can’t afford to buy it?

[PS. I’m about to leave for Europe, so won’t be following this anymore]

>Maybe you should also hear the story from some people on the Linotype side who were there at the time.

Fair enough.

I’d really like some historian to talk to all sides of this and other stories of the 80s type world, and get the viewpoints of different parties down on paper. I think it’s a story worth telling.

> Jonathan Hoefler ... raised his hand and said ...

But of course copying dead people is simply wonderful.
Since the important thing, of course, is that they can’t sue you for money.
The important thing, of course, is Money.

> Bitstream was legitimised by the industry much too soon.

You’re not being even-handed. And you fail to mention a very important thing about Bitstream pertaining to ethics: that they decided to change their mind about not honoring embedding permissions, when they didn’t have to. The riotous applause they received when they announced that indicates that your harsh stance is not shared by many.

> it’s a story worth telling.

It’s a story worth yawning off.

hhp

Also: Instead of trying to nail down blacks and whites, in the realm of Ethics (as opposed to Law) it’s much more useful, much more human, to focus on one simple concept: reasonability - as subjective as that is - because everything is. A good thing to focus on is this passage on the FontInfo site that Elliot referred to above: “Some companies will ... charge outrageous rates or refuse to offer any terms at all.” The alleged Rules of Capitalism can say what they want, balanced human beings know better (even if some of them too often act otherwise, especially when opining on companies one of which they do work for and the other they don’t).

hhp

I’m sticking with my definition of cloning, thanks, and no, I would not shoot someone who was stealing food from my, or anyone else’s garden, preferring to ask questions first...

The Bitstream stuff was certainly my side of the story, but the underlying facts remain: that none of the fonts were clones, most of the sources were more than 50 years old (then), and Linotype licensing was denied for the “new” stuff. The Linotype people who inherited the library from Mike’s regime, (the same upper management who denied Scitex products on politically-based religious grounds), subsequently licensed the library to Adobe at less generous terms than Bitstream offered. Whereupon, another “very, very bad, pirate”, the much loved by me but Ex-Autoligical Sumner Stone, came into typographical control of Adobe’s capture of much of Linotype’s property, for which Linotype ended up paying Adobe royalties, even when they sold their own products. Those Linotype people would be very hard to find! ;)

I don’t know, were they gobsmacked? I must have been too, because I thought Adobe having a monopoly on the tools, the format, the pdl, interpreter and font format was a very, very bad thing, and to allow them a monopoly on design too was worth breaking up at any cost. There are, I guess, designers who are comfortable with their skills, and there are, I guess, others who need the security blanket of an overarching monopoly to protect their “shortcomings” from the fierce glare of the world’s eyes. “Bitstream was legitimized by the industry much too soon.” Me too. What about you? Geeze, some newbies just have no idea how easy they have it now...

God speed and “lead on” John Hudson,

Cheers!

There was certainly a business opportunity to be had, and a demand from customers, for established type designs to be made available in the new digital technology. Nonetheless, several early-established digital foundries chose to publish only original designs. FontFont and Emigre spring to mind. How “easy” did they have it? — Was this “counterculture” only possible in an environment which the availability of classic faces had already made viable?

I think so. Although maybe more than “possible”, probably “financially viable”. But it depends on broader cultural shifts too; if people at large hadn’t become so tired of the “classic attitude” Emigre wouldn’t have become so big, beside the fact of what fonts are available or not to graphic designers.

hhp

When my graphic design practice went digital in the late 90’s, I made good use of the variety of classic faces available. It took a while for digital foundries to create a large number of good new type designs.

Also, compare the huge scope of Adobe Garamond in 1989 with its Expert fonts, and the first release of Scala (1991), which was I believe the first new design with OSF and small caps, at any rate, the first one I felt was satisfactory.

I just wanted to thank Rodrigue for his apology way back in this thread on Sept. 12th - I would have said something earlier, but this is my first time reading it since then.

T

Dave Berlow, you said that “all but a few” of Adobe’s versions of Linotype’s typefaces were licensed from Linotype. As far as I’m aware, it’s “all.” I’m curious if you have any specific examples to the contrary? (All I can imagine is there may be some cases where both Adobe and Lino did revivals from the same source, such as ATF.)

Regards,

T