Just checked with the IT department of my biggest client, a worldwide TV broadcaster, and unfortunately LHF fonts cannot be allowed on their network as the protection scheme installation is considered an application, and they do not allow new applications on their worldwide network without many, many months of testing, etc.. So much for my big purchase/site license of LHF fonts. Meanwhile, I have done a survey of 11 designer friends who all work closely with type. I had them visit the LHF site and also read these threads. Every one of them was adament that the protection scheme was a definite deal breaker. It wasn't even close. I can't see how this is going to work for Chuck. I'd rather see LHF charge A LOT more for their fonts to try and make the business more profitable. Unfortunately, I believe this protection scheme will kill the business sooner or later. What a pity! Please Chuck, come up with something else!

>Just checked with the IT department of my biggest client, a worldwide TV broadcaster,

But, did you contact Chuck directly? I have never negotiated with a font vendor or designer who was not willing to be flexible when the price was right.

Actually, I did contact Chuck—although at the time I did not propose a special exception for my situation—and he was kind enough to send me a lengthy, articulate and thoughtful email explaining his reasoning. I have always enjoyed fantastic service from LHF. I did not want to offend him by asking for special dispensation or trying to throw money at him and asking him to bend the rules. Anyway, if Chuck was willing to forego the protection scheme by increasing the price of his fonts, he probably would've had that as a policy. Even if he did go for the bait, having such a two-tier policy would not only be unfair, but would be a tacit admission that the protection scheme is so bad, customers would be willing to pay extra to avoid it. Sigh.

If I need specific rights I ask for those specific rights. The vendor can give me a price or say, sorry not at any price. Sorry, but maybe it's a cultural thing, but I don't consider this haggling or sordid in any way, it's just business, and as other commentators have said, it's not as if you can't go and find fonts elsewhere.

A simple example is that most vendors make P&P embedding fonts, and I only license 'editable' embedding fonts. The fact that I ask for those rights, and am willing to pay for the extra value that functionality gives my customers does not mean that the vendors are wrong to set their fonts to P&P embedding.

Hmmm. OpenType. Very.

Interesting discussion. While sitting on the fence, I'd like to address two points:

1. Chuck's peace of mind will evaporate as soon as a single crack team fixes the installer, making it redistributable. Then what?

2. The story about an expensive font library being copied. If an amateur can produce the same results with your tools, wtf is your workmanship worth?

Before we offer suggestions such as increasing prices to offset any losses incurred by piracy, the following would have to be true:

1. Piracy = fewer sales
2. Letterhead Fonts cares more about the bottom line than preventing piracy

I believe neither is true.

I await Chuck's answer to my question from earlier today, but I doubt that sales decreased substantially as a result of the increased piracy. And I don't think that matters much to him anyway. It sounds like preventing piracy is a very high priority for him, even if his methods hurt his bottom line. I don't personally agree with that point of view, but if it's true it would trivialize most of the discussion here.

Sergej - this happened in the early 90s -- when typesetters were becoming dinosaurs.

I can remember going to Poppe Tyson (an advertising agency in NY) one morning -- they framed their very first job. I looked at it and screamed, "Who the F set this?"

I was asked by the art director, "Why?"

I looked it over and responded, "If I sent you a job that looked this bad, I'd have a call at 9:01 a.m. letting me know I was replaceable. There is no kerning, no proper rag, no true punctuation!"

The art director responded, "It doesn't matter, I'm proud of it, it was the first job I set myself and the client has 'ok'd' it."

To me that was the end of typography. For others that day, it was the New York Times printing a full page ad with very large inch marks for quote marks... same day, same fate.

So Sergej, I don't know how old you are, or where you were when the amateurs took over - and the customers decided - ah, this is cheaper and we can live with it.

Our shop was excellent. Photoshop, according to Cosmos, ran an ad on my behalf - "Often imitated, never duplicated..." when I spent money on an altergraph and a graphflex and was able to do many of the special effects that they were known for -- and well.

I guess you haven't run into the kid that spent $2200 bucks and thinks he/she can do it all themselves... and what's worse - professionalism has been placed 6-feet under.

And a flash bulletin - there are no typesetters left. Even Boros has given it up. The only reason I was able to survive was by becoming a graphic arts studio... and I was fortunate to work with so many wonderful art directors in New York - greatest apprenticeship program ever!!!

and P.S. I never said he could do it as well - only that he advertised to my customers he could...

It amazes me that designers, people who sell their intellectual property to make a living, would jump all over a company that wants to protect its business by protecting its product. Maybe Letterhead's method isn't foolproof (from the designer standpoint, it sounds like it has some major issues), but I commend them for taking the first step.

The real solution here is that Adobe/Microsoft/Apple need to get together and extend the OpenType scheme to have some sort of native DRM so that designers can protect their work from criminals that justify stealing with "I didn't decrease their sales, so its ok." and other pathetic excuses for their inherent lack of morals.

It's saddening to see this in the creative community.

"It amazes me that designers, people who sell their intellectual property to make a living, would jump all over a company that wants to protect its business by protecting its product."

No one is against a company fighting piracy. A lot of people ARE against a company that ties its own paying customers into absurd hoop jumping clauses that only frustrate.

"The real solution here is that Adobe/Microsoft/Apple need to get together and extend the OpenType scheme to have some sort of native DRM"

DRM does nothing to stop real piracy. If someone can come up with a DRM scheme, someone sitting in a cubicle in China can crack it. It's just a silly cat and mouse game and the paying consumer gets stuck with dealing with all the crap it entails.

Are there exceptions? Certainly. iTunes succeeds in spite of its DRM. Granted, a big part of that is because their DRM is a lot less restrictive than other music DRM options right now.

"and other pathetic excuses for their inherent lack of morals."

Unfortunately, neither laws nor technology can do much to change personal morals.

Some examples, btw, in the past month:

- Windows Vista DRM has been cracked to get around the authentication scheme

- HD DVD DRM has been cracked so you can now copy HD DVDs

Now these are DRM schemes brought to market by huge industry heavyweights with ungodly amounts of money and resources. But, easily cracked. They always are.

"But Letterhead Fonts has the right to protect it’s fonts."
Of course it does. I'm still a little confused about how you're going about it...

You have not mentioned any problems that are not correctable by forceful legal action assuming copyright and trademark registration.

Whether you are opposed to the use of legal force, or a simply trying to stop font "collectors", the temporary protection (via an installer), puts a permanent stop to casual borrowers who become licensees when your IP hits their publication's legal fan, at which point they are normally in immediate need of a license.

This is close to 1/4 of our business, so I'm wondering at the marketing, sales and support model that makes this work, and while hoping it works for you, we can't follow and continue our policy of forceful legal action, the very threat of which, usually accomplishes our goals.

Cheers!

And another question... Couldn't someone with FontLab simply open an LHF font and regenerate it so as to strip off the encrypted or embedded user info? If so, I'm kind of wondering what's the point. The "smart" pirates are going to be smart enough to do so, meaning only the dumb ones get caught. But the end result is the knowledgeable pirates still pirate the fonts and get them circulated around without much trouble or being traced. No?

what's the actual security mechanism? i'm assuming you are emailed a licence key number when you make a purchase, and this must be typed into the installer before it will download the fonts?

I don't see how a small company could muster the forces to persue legal action—even threats—again and again and again. Sounds very expensive and time-consuming to me. How do you do it?

That's one of the points malbright - most companies cannot afford to go after small time thieves...

I was always "comforted" by -- the person who steals wouldn't have been one to buy the service anyway.... I know, not comforting, but also, not a loss of a sale.

Exactly, heron2001. I was responding to dberlow's post above. I agree with you wholeheartedly about the fact that most of those doing the stealing would never be customers anyway.

Geez - this site is so polarized sometimes.

Letterhead has every right to do what they want and you have every right ro respond accordingly.

Is there more to the story than that?

peace

>a small company could muster the forces to persue legal action—even threats

If I understand David Berlow's posting rightly, normally lawyers don't need to be involved, once the 'nastygram' has been written. I think at TypeCon he said that they send a letter something like this: "Congratulations, you are now our valued customer. Our bill of ... for our fonts that you are now using is attached. The penalty for using our fonts without purchase, otherwise known as piracy is..." and then follows the nasty stuff.

A catch here is that publications such as magazines and newspapers are FontBureau's primary customers, whereas Letterhead Font's customers are, I gather, to a large extent sign makers. Publications I would think are a lot easier to monitor than signs. On the other hand, sign makers are a much smaller universe than signs, so maybe there is another way...

I have ten distributors, none of whom give me more than an email address in the way of purchaser information, so it's practically impossible to know, when I see a type of mine being used, whether it's legit.

My marketing strategy has always been "I am the brand", putting a face to the face, so to speak, so I rely on the inclination of users not to pirate original work by an identifiable person (as was earlier noted in the thread).

On a positive note, I've found that a great many font users, in businesses of all sizes, are extremely diligent about their software licences, and that includes fonts. So the results of the survey here are no doubt quite genuine, and heartening. And those respondents who say they ignore the EULA are not admitting to piracy.

So the results of the survey here are no doubt quite genuine, and heartening. And those respondents who say they ignore the EULA are not admitting to piracy.

There is a difference between piracy and violating the EULA, which is a breach of contract (to the extent that the EULA is binding).

By the way, (and this is off topic), suppose I buy computers with pre-installed fonts from a company that no longer exists -- suppose they went bankrupt or the owner retired to Costa Rica. Would one say that I can do whatever I want with the fonts since I am not bound by the contract? In other words, do the rights of the designer stem exclusively from the EULA?

Please close your CITE tag - thanks!

Edit: Thank you!

There is a difference between piracy and violating the EULA

That was my point. If you can't be bothered to read the EULA, that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be pirating software to friends and acquaintances.

Admitting that I am sometimes (usually) too busy to read every last word of a EULA before checking "I agree" doesn't translate to disseminating the font to everyone I know. I'm aware of font piracy, try not to do it, but wish EULAs were simpler and a bit more user-friendly for the independent designer.

I wonder why there's no fuss when I loan a book to a friend. The author doesn't get the royalty, but you never hear authors or publishers trying to stand in the way of passing books around. In fact you can buy used books at Amazon. Why is it so different with fonts and music?

>but you never hear authors or publishers trying to stand in the way of passing books around.

I think they have complained in the past, especially when the second hand book trade started to move online, and finding second hand copy of the title became much easier.

However, the difference is of course that in passing the font or music file around, more often than not a "backup copy" is retained by the original purchaser. That's not really sharing, its more like duplication.

You have a point.

But once I've read a book I'm usually done with it, whereas I reuse fonts and music all the time.

I guess my point is that business models are changing - witness what's happening to the music industry with iTunes - and while there was an initial fuss now they're trying to accept the new reality and figure out ways to still make money. I think if it were a bit easier with fonts it would be less tempting to just pass a font on to a printer with a job. Everybody would win. Letterhead is trying to address this in their own way, but they will no doubt lose customers. There should be a better way for designers and foundries to make their profits and not punish the customer. And accept that there will always be people who circumvent the rules, you can't go after everybody.

Why is it so different with fonts and music?

Actually, some EULAs allow resale of the licence, if the seller trashes her own copy of the font file--so that would be like reselling a book.

European copyright law has recently changed, to allow artists "commission" on works when purchasers resell them. Don't see that working with books though.

Reselling is different than sharing! Whether it's fonts, music, or books.

I wonder why there’s no fuss when I loan a book to a friend. The author doesn’t get the royalty, but you never hear authors or publishers trying to stand in the way of passing books around. In fact you can buy used books at Amazon. Why is it so different with fonts and music?

Here in the USA, first sale doctrine was established in law ages ago and this keeps book and music publishers from getting royalties on resale. This is not the case in some countries—in Japan, for example, resale of video games is illegal (although it still happens). With software the publishers have the option of requiring acceptance of a license before use, so they can effectively block resale of the product. I expect that we'll see the details of all this set in precedent soon, because video game companies are taking big hits from restailers who purchase new games in limited quantities and then rely on used game sales to boost margins. At some point there's going to be a game company that decides this is violating a EULA, and the lawsuits will start flying.

Whether it’s fonts, music, or books

But for fish and loaves, Jesus is still the Man :-)

But I reiterate, reselling (and thus making money off someone else's work) is different than sharing. Are both considered piracy?

And here's something else: I have three computers in my home/office. But I am one person, as opposed to three people, each with one computer in an office. Should I really have to pay for a license for three computers? That seems unfair, and this is what I mean by EULAs being at times unnecessarily restrictive.

>I have three computers in my home/office. But I am one person, as opposed to three people, each with one computer in an office.

Most fonts are licensed per device, not per person, and most font licenses cover five devices (at one location). Tiff and others have argued for a laptop clause to get around the lcoation issue.

As for the other software on those machines, did you pay three times for the operating system? How about the apps, once or three times? Do you feel apps and OS's should be paid per machine or per person?

I think per user. No I did not buy three licenses of each software. I can't bloody well afford that. CS2 I know gives you two machines per license (altho I haven't bought it yet). Actually one machine still runs OS 9 so it doesn't use the same software/version anyway.

My OS came with the iMac. My neighbor bought a multi-user Tiger installer and gave me one of them for my laptop.

It would seem as if it's easier to "stay legal" with fonts than with other types of software.

Do you mean from a cost standpoint, Si?

I have two machines, my regular OSX iMac and a little old Compaq laptop that runs (please don't laugh) Win95 and that I use for portable note-taking needs. I don't even get the possibility of being able to buy once and use twice....

But I reiterate, reselling (and thus making money off someone else’s work) is different than sharing. Are both considered piracy?

Sharing in what sense? For example, it could be said that you and your neighbor are sharing an OS X multi-user license pack, or that the employees of a print shop are sharing all of the font licenses installed on a prepress machine, both uses are probably legitimate. But if you mean sharing in the sense of filesharing, that's piracy unless you've been given permission to do so.

It's still expensive, especially when you're in business for yourself and have low-budget clients.

I know I'm boxing myself into a hole here, but I feel like the restrictiveness of a lot of EULAs makes it hard for the little guy to stay honest. And by the same token I care more about an independent foundry getting its deserved dollars than Linotype or Adobe.

>Do you mean from a cost standpoint, Si?

No, from the 5 device standpoint,

It certainly doesn't favour folks like Patty and me who run independent businesses; by the time we upgrade the apps and the OS, nevermind the hardware end of things, there ain't much left over, even when one considers that sort of thing being a legit business expense.

I know I’m boxing myself into a hole here, but I feel like the restrictiveness of a lot of EULAs makes it hard for the little guy to stay honest. And by the same token I care more about an independent foundry getting its deserved dollars than Linotype or Adobe.

It seems to me that the little guy has a better chance of staying honest than a corporation. For a freelancer, or a small shop, keep track of licenses is easy. Maybe you don't have customers with bottomless bank accounts, but you're in a better position to just get a font purchased than someone who has to deal with a corporate beauracracy. Sure it might cost you a client now and then, but that's the price one has to pay for integrity.

Regardless of the pros and cons and all the debate in-between, the bottom line for many of us is that we can no longer use one of our favorite foundries, and that's a real shame.

Here's what I think would be a better approach than unworkable, proprietary protection schemes. Put a face on the company. Let people know the man they're buying from. Let customers know that every purchase makes a BIG difference. Have new customers sign and fax a pledge that they will not make unauthorized copies. Let people know that you are counting on them, trusting them to help you keep the business going. Let them see the face of the person they'd be stealing from. Personalize the experience. It won't stop piracy. Nothing will. But it'll discourage.

Maybe too Chuck should have a policy whereby if you want an "unlocked" font, instead of $29 you pay, say, $99 or more ... a premium price.

To show you the futility of Chuck's technology, let me share this true story. A few months ago I was at The Magic Castle in Hollywood and I noticed a lovely flyer typeset in LHF's Boston Truckstyle. I complimented the designer, and he said, "Yeah, we had no budget for type, so I just traced the letters from the site." (Abbreviated the story, but that's the gist of it.) Mind you, we're talking a $29 font here, if memory serves. So one way or the other, people who dont want to pay, won't.

Chuck's technology will seriously injure or kill his business, you wait and see. It is absolutely non-customer centric. Maybe Chuck doesn't care. Maybe Chuck somehow believes this will actually stop thieves from stealing. Maybe Chuck hates piracy so much that he's willing to take a big hit in sales. Maybe Chuck is so pissed-off that he is no longer willing to work with those of us who are his biggest supporters and fans. If so, I wouldn't blame him at all.

Bummer for me, though. I've designed a 600-page book and was planning to use many of Chuck's fonts throughout.

Well, there's still his terrific client galleries to enjoy. And when the day comes that Chuck finally realizes what a bad idea this was, I'll be the first in line to pony up my cash. Hopefully it'll be before this damn book needs to get produced.

My, my, my...what an interesting, yet difficult to follow thread. We is quite the opinionated bunch, ain't we? I have a few points I wanted to address.

1. EULA, SCHMULA...we read 'em when we have to. But no busy person or firm is going to sit down and read every one of them if they make many font purchases from many different foundries.

2. There's a lot to be learned from Heron's Quark story, as it seems Adobe has learned from Quark's "piracy paranoia" and makes their software (and EULA) less restrictive. Witness Quark's ever shrinking market share.

Sii (and everyone as a whole), something I think a lot of people who work for large companies don't realize, is how faceless companies can be perceived by consumers. This does not go just for the big 'uns— the small ones too. We visit a webpage, we make a purchase. Who are we talking to exactly when we're buying fonts? There's no follow-up call with purchases, just an icon that appears on our desktop and e-mailed invoice. Not very personal, no evidence of a human being involved in the process. Phoning the company is plausible to us because many of us here on Typophile actually know someone (or are that someone) who works in the type industry.

As the sole "graphic designer" for the company I work for, I have to play the role of both the Font Congress and the Font Police. Purchasing fonts is a cold business transaction. The type industry as a whole has a serious PR problem to creative types in general and very few people in the industry seem to be willing to address this.

To Chuck directly:

3. Piggybacking my last statement— Malbright's more positive points are right on the money I think. I would pick up the 12 Immutable Laws of Branding if you haven't read it already. You'll learn a lot from that book. Your brand is important, put a face with it.

4. A spin on this discussion— fine tune the installation software and then patent it. If you get it right, I'd bet many, many type companies would pay you for a standardized application and you could end up revolutionizing the type industry as a whole by finding a way around the font piracy issue. You could recoup losses from there. (But that's aiming high.)

You're in the software business, so start selling that sh!t! Good luck to you! :)

Your point 4 is creative, and normally I would agree. But let's be honest. It's a horrible, non user-focused protection scheme that I predict will stop more customers from buying than pirates from stealing. A more realistic business strategy would be for Chuck to give all his competitors the software for free, hence insidiously killing their businesses and leaving the spoils for himself. Be realistic. The industry will never adopt this as a standard—it's an unworkable solution and only punishes the honest customers. Great book you recommended by the way—please Chuck, I hope you're reading all this!

>Sii (and everyone as a whole), something I think a lot of people who work for large companies don’t realize, is how faceless companies can be perceived by consumers.

Can you blame me/us for trying to change that, at least in this 'industry'?

FYI

I just went over to Letterhead's website (by the way a beta version of Chuck Davis' LHF Cafe Corina is in the free downloads) and I noticed that on the Home page there is an announcement:

Notice
Letterhead Fonts are now offered in Postscript Open Type, etc.

if you click on that - Chuck is giving full details of the change, what to expect and even if you need to call him after you purchase. It just takes some time to look and read...

http://www.letterheadfonts.com/support/changes.shtml

Can you blame me/us for trying to change that, at least in this ‘industry’?

Absolutely not, Simon. By even mentioning it and showing up so frequently on Typophile you're inadvertently doing a nice PR job for Microsoft.

"European copyright law has recently changed, to allow artists “commission” on works when purchasers resell them."

Scary! What next? Ford demanding $100 from every used pickup sold and lawyers flocking to garage sales to collect 'royalties' on that 20 year old blender you are selling for $.50?

It's not for mass-produced objects.
I think there is a limit on print-runs for etchings, etc., for those to qualify.

“European copyright law has recently changed, to allow artists “commission” on works when purchasers resell them.”

This "Bruxelles measure" is quite controversial — apparantly a lot of art dealers in Europe plan to move or already have moved their operations off shore, eg to Switzerland.

BTW The compensation is capped — 12500 euro's max.

>if you click on that - Chuck is giving full details of the change,
>what to expect and even if you need to call him after you purchase.
>It just takes some time to look and read…
>
>http://www.letterheadfonts.com/support/changes.shtml

Yes, this information was all there when I bought one of the new just-released LHF fonts before starting this thread (as I pointed out in an earlier post). But as I've noted a couple of times before, the information offered is limited and in my opinion less than honest because it withholds other facts needed for full disclosure. The main three things we are told is the fonts are not put in the system fonts folders, they won't work with font managers, and they won’t embed in PDFs and have to be converted to outlines first.

But the URL above withholds telling the buyer they no longer get a regular OpenType .otf file they can manage, or that the entire scheme is a black-box operation so the fonts are locked down and the user can't touch them outside of use within DTP applications. We also aren't informed fonts cannot be packaged for output to a service bureau, though perhaps one should be able to surmise this from the fact fonts aren't imbeddable in PDFs, but it certainly isn't noted. The site info also doesn't mention that LHF fonts are now either all on or all off with no ability to load them individually.

The user is simply left in the dark about these critical facts and to discover them on their own *after* they have already paid their money and started using the font(s). As Chuck said, he has the right to implement whatever scheme he wants. But by the same token users have a right to be fully informed before making a purchase too. That's not the case right now.

Also, on the LHF site, this is all framed in the context of being better technology. Nothing at all is said about Chuck being fed up with piracy (other than a vague passing allusion in his "About LHF" bio on the site) and that this was the real reason for the change, or at least the reason for the lockdown aspect of it that is never divulged.

And I think this is because Chuck is probably afraid of what would happen to sales if he were to be completely forthcoming about it. Understandably, I guess. I mean, I like Chuck. I understand the dilemma. But it's also understandable that many users will need and want to know. If it's a serious rather than casual or uninformed type user, you're going to have a seriously annoyed customer on your hands if you make them buy first only to find out the real "gotchas" later.

"I don’t see how a small company could muster the forces to pursue legal action—"
If a small company's business IS intellectual property represented in digital form, then I'm of the opinion that they must do something. I mean, all such companies are based on the laws that have been enacted to make such property possible. So, it's only a question when, if you are going to directly license and thus police, you beat a quick path to three stages; send licensing agreement, send cease and desist, file suit. And nevertheless, as this 3-staged legal path making must be done with or without an installer/hider, no?

"most of those doing the stealing would never be customers anyway."
Exactly. You pick and choose. Maybe it's different for signage fonts and especially good display faces, but I think it's not, in fact, I think they are much easier to spot, track and trap, skin and license. I think, we have never made it to stage 3, which is where the real money is to be spent. Either way, I wish them luck with an installer, and if it works, all the better to cut down on policing, maybe?

I noticed that Letterhead Fonts is now directly linking price increases to piracy.

>

Fonts are tangible goods around here and will forever be treated as such. Theft always affects the price of fonts and there are some costs that must be recouped. ... In order to recoup these losses, LHF Garner must now sell for $39 (32% increase).

I share Letterhead's interest in reducing piracy, but I'm puzzled about how they think the pirates will respond to this. I fear it will have no effect on piracy and will have a negative effect on sales.

Prices should be set based on the value of the product. Like some have said earlier in this discussion: punishing your paying customers is not a good way to reduce piracy, nor endear respect.

Letterhead has responded to this criticism, but I don't think the post really answers the key question: how do price increases reduce piracy?

I'll just say what I"m thinking and hope no one gets too angry with me.

I think some foundries think fonts being pirated EQUALS a lost sale. This isn't the case. We all know that some designers do TEST fonts before they license them, so in that case, yes, it is a lost sale as those designers shouldn't be doing that.

Perhaps LHF cannot separate the two. So to them increasing prices will in some small way make up for some of the piracy.

Hmm. Ok it took me reading some of their response to see what you mean.

I don't think raising prices will decrease piracy.

Letterheads line of reasoning could ultimately lead to just one sale a year — for say $ 624,678 —, right?

Makes me think of a plan a friend of mine lauched some decades ago. He got to tell about it in a very popular tv talk show. His 'Plan to reduce smoking' went like this: Smokers cease to buy their cigarettes, but boost them from other smokers. That of course goes on until just one person in the whole country has to provide for all those smokes. He or she won't be able to bear the grunt in the end, stops buying cigarettes and ergo: all smokers have to stop.

Just use the words fonts and piracy and end users in the right places. ; )

. . .
Bert Vanderveen BNO

On another hand, Letterhead's prices still aren't what I've seen Veer fonts going for. This might be naive, but I guess if Veer can get $99 for a font, then what is $39?

Fontplayer - The difference here is motivation. Veer feels that very extensive OpenType fonts are worth $99 a pop. I would take no issue with Letterhead if they deemed their fonts are worth more than their standard $29.50 price (I'd bet they are worth every bit of $39). But raising the cost and blaming pirates is just strange.

But raising the cost and blaming pirates is just strange.

If Letterhead’s sales are dropping, but use of the fonts is not, it makes a lot of sense. People are getting those fonts somewhere.

The difference here is motivation. Veer feels that very extensive OpenType fonts are worth $99 a pop.

I can't argue with that. Some of them are certainly gorgeous. I trust the designers are doing well in the arrangement; I see some experienced names represented there.

"I think some foundries think fonts being pirated EQUALS a lost sale. "

You are absolutely correct. It's a theoretical lost sale, at best, and even then, it's a rather flimsy theory.

I agree with most everyone here...it's fine to increase prices...it's silly and almost insulting to blame it on 'pirates'.

@James: But by raising the prices they are punishing those who DO license their fonts not those who DO NOT. Don't you think that is strange?

I've seen on usenet people asking for specific fonts and the regulars piping up that they do not share that foundries fonts because they are so inexpensive and they also have nice free fonts. This sort of action, raising the prices because of the pirating, will probably have an adverse reaction.

I think if some people put as much energy into marketing and making new fonts, as they use worrying about pirates, they would probably come out ahead. Some people have never uttered a peep about pirates, and are doing quite well.

IMO, it's kind of like life in general. On one side is pragmatism, and on the other, bitterness. You could be full-time stressed and miserable about how screwed up the world is, or you can try and make the best of things where you are, and try to enjoy what is valuable to you.

@Tiffany: I don’t think it’s strange—font designers have bills to pay. It’s a crummy situation, but not a strange one, and not one limited to the font industry.

I think if some people put as much energy into marketing and making new fonts…

I tend to agree, but I think that teaching type design would probably be a better option than making new fonts. I really got into type piracy when my first design teacher passed around two DVDs packed with six gigabytes of fonts. I only started paying for type after I had learned about the people and the labor behind type design. I think that making that experience part of the curriculum of every design program would have a big impact on font piracy.

You're on to something, James. Piracy is in many ways a symptom of undereducated design students. Young people don't react to scolding or price increases. A patient, thorough education in letter drawing will help them value type. Of course, that education isn't the responsibility of the type makers, but it is helpful for everyone to understand the roots of the problem.

>>I think some foundries think fonts being pirated EQUALS a lost sale.

Not only foundries, every software company likes to do those statistics of losses due to piracy. (Number of illegal copies/downloads x Price = Loss)
Of course, that is nonsense. The ones who are collecting gigabytes of fonts in P2P networks are usually teenagers who would never had bought the fonts. So there is no loss.
But there is also a number of professional designers who try to find a font for free, and only if they are not successful they will buy it. So here the download can be a real financial loss for the foundry. So the real question is: Is the time spent hunting down these people less expensive than the loss they create. I guess not.
I would even image that many fonts (or other software products), that are used without a license today, can turn into a real sale tomorrow. I didn't bought my first version of Photoshop, but I did when I started a company. The same could be true for fonts.
Another example: Some years ago I did this type specimen book with recommendable fonts from various foundries. The majority of foundries was willing to give me their fonts to be presented in the book. But some foundries didn't, and I'm sure they didn't gave it me because they were afraid I could spread the fonts for free. But in the end, those were the fonts I couln't advertise …
Font piracy was invented the day after the first letter was casted. It was always there and it will never go away. I guess if you are overcautious with your fonts, you are the one decreasing the sales …

You can go on and on all you like about whether a pirated font equals a lost sale or not. That argument is circular, and it is hard to see the point of it, if there is any point to it at all. The answer is immaterial as we are talking about hypothetical sales.

Stephen Coles: Letterhead has responded to this criticism, but I don’t think the post really answers the key question: how do price increases reduce piracy?

Where does this idea come from? The idea that LHF's price increases are supposed to reduce piracy of their fonts?

I've read most of this thread, and I have read what Chuck has written in response. The purpose of the price increases, as far as I can discern, is to compensate LHF for the lost production time incurred in cleaning up the mess pirates make in stealing LHF font products. I also presume the price increases are not intended to reduce piracy of LHF fonts.

I referred to "cleaning up the mess" in my first post on this thread. The point is, every time LHF's fonts are pirated, some of the type producer's time must be spent removing the pirated material from circulation. Fonts are labour-intensive things to make. The "lost revenue" compensated for by the LHF retail font price increases is, I presume, the revenue not earned due to their reduced capacity to make fonts caused by having to take illicit material out of circulation.

There is a basic problem with this discussion thread. It started on the topic of the anti-piracy lockdown scheme, then the topic of LHF font price increases cropped up, and somewhere along the way some commentators who should know better have confused the notion of "anti-piracy" with the price increases.

j a m e s

Clearly the solution is to get the IRS to allow theoretical losses due to piracy as a tax write off.

It's bad marketing. Macy's doesn't tell you they are increasing prices because of shoplifting and in-house theft, but they are.

pbc

Macy’s doesn’t tell you they are increasing prices because of shoplifting and in-house theft, but they are.

Are you kidding me? I see signs in stores all the time stating that they have security cameras everywhere so that prices don’t keep going up!

It’s bad marketing. Macy’s doesn’t tell you they are increasing prices because of shoplifting and in-house theft, but they are.

Some things are left unspoken.

j a m e s

I bought a Letterhead font last night and did not know about the brouhaha over restrictions, and quickly wrote to them for support. It was only then that I started Googling and found all the discussions about their DRM move.

This morning, I got a reply from Letterhead letting me know that they are removing the PDF-embedding restriction from ALL of their typefaces (it will be done in "2-3 days") and to log in on the site and redownload the font I purchased. I think this is a very good move.

Zan, welcome to typophile.

When did you get out of the plumbing business?

I have heard it before in here. Actually this time was more painful as I was reading it was one thirty am. My lovely wife resolved to stick to this tv show and we ended up not going to bed at the customary time. Ah, I wasn't watching the show as I was hammering a invitation project. It was at some point kind of difficult to proceed because my keyboard is black and the small type (actually it looks like Univers Italic and it measures ... exact 17 pt.! - I measured it with AGL type ruler, which is very accurate). So, as couldn't read no more and gave up for the day I turned to this tread. I haven't seen this tread until it was already skyrocketed to cosmic measurements. It was one am or so and once again I went to FH website and even thought of buying a font. I just can't not love them cause nineteenth century is glued to my retinas. The prices aren't bad but something bothers me, who have bought a couple of fonts ever due to that the use of fonts is part of the job and when the fonts are available with the packaged files, one can tweak here and there and get the job to rip and bye bye. All is fast in the commercial printing which couldn't be without the font files. Of course doing the ctrl+o before pd-éfing the document, which is easy to do for display fonts as per Miss Tiffany. All measured out and all I guess you can even add dongles to the process which will indeed lock it all out, good, promoting your peace of mind.
I wish you exercise you determination as you see fit. Hail.

The thing with Quark is this.

edit : cmd+shift+p

apologies for not reading the whole of that above so this question may have been posed and answered already but:

does Illustrator let you 'create outline' of these fonts?

Letterhead fonts are embeddable as of May 21st, though you need to re-download previously purchased fonts to have the embedding bit changed. The announcement is at http://letterheadfonts.com/news/index.shtml?a=blog&id=35.

For any of you who are not technically aware. You can get around the whole idea of locked fonts quite easily. Make the file yourself. You can download a font creator program for free off Dafont.com. After that, open illustrator (or CorelDraw) and type in all individual letters and numbers into your artboard. Convert the font to outlines and the add them to the font creator program as individual letters. Once finished the program will create a TTF for use whenever you want and you can give it as freely as you wish. Although I do not agree with piracy, if I pay for a font, I believe I should be able to put it on all of my computers at home, not just one. I refuse to by the same font over and over for a different computer. My purchase, mine to do with as I please.

Piracy issues aside, there's a BIG difference between a font that's created by copying and pasting outlines into a font program, and the original font that's been kerned and hinted.

BigLeague: Once finished the program will create a TTF for use whenever you want and you can give it as freely as you wish.

No, you can't freely give it away as you wish... check the EULA for the font you purchased. What you've described is called a 'derivative work', and most EULA's restrict the derivative font to be used in the same manner as the original font. You do not get any new rights (i.e. you can't install it on any more workstations than the original font).

Um, right. BigLeague, just because you "believe" you "should" be able to do something doesn't make it legal. You're describing your own moral/ethical choices, but they won't necessarily hold up in a court of law.

By the way, the typical Adobe font EULA allows a font to be installed on five computers. I would guess that one reason Adobe allows that is because it gives Adobe a competitive advantage (in theory) over other foundries which only allow one computer installation. If you "refuse to buy the same font over and over," then find a foundry that allows you to do what you want instead of making up your own rules!

Also, in reaction to BigLeague, you do not buy the font: you buy a license for the font, that allows you to use it the way the foundry states in the EULA.

It's true that this scheme is awkward for the legitimate user. What I think will have to eventually happen, though, is that the operating system include some sort of standard way to lock a font to a machine.

The font installer would basically talk to the OS when installing the font, and the OS would put an encrypted form of the font on the machine that wouldn't work if copied to another machine, being encrypted by a random unique key set up when the OS was installed.

That would obviate the need for techniques as extravagant as this one. Regular executables could be handled in this way by an OS as well, and this would encourage developers to develop for the OS, as they wouldn't have to develop their own security schemes.

Incidentally, increasing prices to recoup losses due to piracy isn't the same thing as increasing prices to discourage piracy. Presumably piracy causes some lost sales, and so the unit price on the remaining sales has to be increased to keep revenues constant. Of course, though, a lower price should mean more legitimate sales, and a higher price likely will mean less sales - even if the result is purchases of other fonts, not more piracy.

The font data will still need to appear somewhere in the computer memory in its raw format (otherwise the font will not be usable by the software like Illustrator). Once it is raw, it will be grabbed and saved into a de-DRM'd file.

This is a really old issue that has been explored in depth with shareware programs. DRM does not work (as in it is easy to break) unless it is rooted in the hardware (e.g. specialized chip) and the user is denied arbitrary access to this part of his computer. The problem here of course is how to convince a user to buy a computer that he does not have a full control over.

The problem here of course is how to convince a user to buy a computer that he does not have a full control over.

Well, if that is the only kind of computer that will play a Blu-Ray disc, for example, it may also be the only type of computer available for sale before long. I think such features are already present in the latest Intel and AMD microprocessors.

But even a very imperfect DRM might be better than nothing, and good enough that companies will feel they can use that instead of taking such a step as Letterhead Fonts did. Also, while it's true the encrypted font data needs to be decrypted in memory, it doesn't follow that a usable image of the whole file will be there. The individual characters could all be present, but without the data linking them together being present in the same format as in an unencrypted font file... except for a short time when the header, but not the characters, have been read in.

BluRay? haha. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2369280,00.asp

DRM is like major political philosophies. It works great. But only on paper. It doesn't really work as intended in real life. ;)

Jim Baen, of Baen Books, was worried about piracy etc when he decided to get into the e-book market. His friend Eric Flint, an author and editor, convinced Jim to try something crazy...

Give away free copies of e-books, in several different formats, without any DRM or copy ptotection, and with the only restriction on the downloader being they could not sell copies. The EULA on the free Baen e-books practically demands you give copies to people.

At the Baen Free Library site, the books for free are chosen by the authors. Permission for books by dead authors is given by their estates or whomever holds the copyright.

Flint was right in what he told Jim. Don't give a crap about "piracy". Treat the customers like customers instead of thieves. Don't try to exert micromanagement control over what the customer can and cannot do with the product.

People actually PAY for many e-books Baen gives away for free. Why? Because it supports authors they like, which gets more new stories from those authors. Paying for free e-books also supports Baen, the distributor of the goodies.

But Baen took it a step further. They've released CD-ROMs with several of their hardcover printings containing the e-book version and many other e-books by that author and many others. Printed on all those CD-ROMs is the simple EULA that encourages making copies of the CD's to give to others. The contents of all those CD-ROMs are downloadable from many websites and are all over the P2P networks.

Baen's e-book and dead tree sales keep increasing because they're being nice to their customers instead of glaring through slitted eyes at all those ungrateful potential thieves.

Jim Baen (RIP) figured giving the books away would have his company bankrupt and out of business in short order, because he *had* the typical corporate "They're all thieves!" attitude and agonized over every "lost sale". I suspect he felt much better after dropping the 'tude and realized that people who aren't going to pay to get something just flat out aren't going to pay.

I've read this whole thread and see there's still many who still continue to FAIL to realize the difference between a digital, intangible computer file and a real, physical object. It is not possible to steal a digital file, unless there is only one unique copy and the physical object (such as a CD-RW) containing it is itself stolen or a copy of the file is made and the unique original is deleted.

As long as the copyright owner retains a copy, making more is as simple as commanding a computer to copy it. Once several copies are "in the wild", should the copyright owner somehow lose all his or her or its copies, the owner just needs to obtain one of those other copies.

For physical objects, it is a totally different reality. Take any one of a kind piece of art. If an art thief makes off with that one of a kind piece, it's *gone*, stolen. The only way to get it back is to track it down physically.

If you wanted to really steal a song today here's what you'd have to do. First, obtain every single CD, record, tape and every other piece of media it's ever been released on, including any sheet music copies and lyrics and guitar tabs on the web, and disc stamping plates. Second, delete every digital copy that's ever been made of the song. Third, kill the singer(s) and musician(s) who performed it, or at least somehow make them unable to re-record the song. Fourth, break into Stone Mountain and steal the master recordings, which often include all the individual track recordings that're mixed together.

Finally, you and you alone have all copies of the song and any means of reproducing it. NOW you have well and truly stolen a song. Sony must come crawling to you to obtain a copy so they can feed it to the CD mastering machine to make new plates to stamp new discs. Once they have that single copy, all your effort to steal the song becomes pointless.

Sound ridiculous, impossible? Of course it is. The digital world can ensure that nothing can ever be lost, as long as at least one copy is out there, somewhere.

Concentrate on selling to the honest people. Treat them like you believe they will act honestly and honorably and golly gee, most of them will. The ones who want free copies will almost always be able to find free copies. Most of them will never pay, thus they aren't "lost sales". If you have a reputation for fair dealing, some of those non-payers will at some point decide to pay you for your product.

Don't agonize over the "thieves". They're going to act how they do no matter what you do or think.

Something I remember from a John C. Dvorak article in PC Magazine, went something like "I don't care if the first copy of your software cost you $50,000 to develop. The second copy cost you $2 to make. Convince my why I need to buy your software instead of a competitor's or looking for something free on the web."

Not many customers give a crap about the work that was expended writing a program or creating a digital image or designing a font. What matters is what they can do with the digital product, what it means to them, what they see as the intrinsic values of the product itself. They know that once completed, the 'production cost' of digital products is essentially zero. Bang, bang, bang. Millions of copies as easy as one. (Just look at SPAM e-mails.) Arrangements of electrons whizzing around in silicon, patterns of magnetism on spinning platters or coded spirals of pits in metalized plastic. Duplication is cheap. Truly stealing digital product is impossible, pop off another copy for another paying customer the instant he clicks Checkout.

You have to make it worth it for the customer to appreciate your product and want to eagerly give you money for it. Set a price on your fonts. Tell people buy it, or not. Don't glare at the customers with the ole' stink eye. If you still lie awake worrying about people getting copies without paying, put some sort of serial numbers in the fonts, keep a record of which customer is assigned which numbers. Give the customers copies of the serial numbers.

Make it known (NICELY) that the numbers are useful for your customers' own inventory/auditing/tracking etc. They can help your customers control their own use of the fonts. Printers have to have the fonts in some form, typically embedded in PDFs the way the majority of printing is these days. Throwing rocks in the path of current work and production flows is counter productive.

Perhaps giving printers, who only do printing, not designing and layout, a reduced price on the fonts, or heck, just give them free copies, would help. Then you, the font designer, could use that as a selling point to designers. "Brown's printing in your city has ALL of my fonts so you can use any of my fonts and send PDFs to Brown's and you'll never ever have an issue with the printer missing fonts." Preemptive marketing tactics via carpet-bombing one of the biggest issues in digital design, the printer doesn't have Font X and the font cannot be embedded, but if all the major printers already have the fonts...

Then if you are still paranoid about all that potential theft going on, you can spend (or waste) time lurking around the darker corners of the web and P2P looking for copies of your fonts, downloading them and checking the serial numbers, then making polite calls or e-mails to those customers to inform them that font such and so has escaped their control, would they be so kind as to find out how it might have happened.

That might get many customers to exercise the due diligence to prevent your fonts from getting away from them.

Chuck doesn't really make fonts anymore. He sells the fonts of better designers, and treats them like garbage. Just ask Larry White. As for that sham Fontguard, Chucky doesn't have much faith in it. He now places the purchaser's name and address in the Copyright/version string of the fonts you buy. And, he makes you register an account with a valid telephone number so he can call you and make sure that you're white.

I registered to buy Factory earlier this year. Within about an hour he called me. The call went like this;
ME. Hello
Chuck.(Rudely) Yeah I'm calling to register an account for 'NAME', is that you?
ME. Yes, wow that was fast.
Chuck.(Rudely) Where are you from?
ME. I was born here in the US, why?
Chuck.(Rudely) No you're not, You don't sound American. You have a ghetto Accent.
ME. Well, my parents were from Asia, received citizenship in the 80's. But I was born here & I'm not ghetto.
Chuck. (Rudely)Forget it I can't help you. Go somewhere else. (Hung up)

Guy's a jerk. So if you have an accent or aren't within his color preference, I guess he won't sell to you. But sadly, that's really only hurting the designers who sell through him. Give it a try yourself. Let him call you and have a friend with a Russian or Hispanic accent answer. Watch him hang up. Before he sees this post that is. If only smart phones could record their audio...

Yesterday I had a young friend come over to my house and bring her laptop in order to design a logo for my new business. I wanted to use Letterhead Fonts so I purchased a couple of fonts, paid through Paypal and then was informed by the LHF website that I had to wait 30 minutes for someone to call me to confirm my order since it was my first purchase. I waited 45 minutes and never got a call. Apparently I missed the call sometimes affter that, LHF cancelled my order, refunded my payment and never answered their phone when I tried to call. The next day I emailed at 8 am and again at noon. I finally received a rude email from Carolyn Smith (customer service)asking why I didn't answer my phone the day before but offered no solution to my purchase attempt. I was locked out of my account after two attempts at reordering and have decided now that it just isn't worth dealing with them. Carolyn must be married to "Chuck" because I can't think of any other reason someone would pay such a rude employee.

I'm sorry I'd lost track of this thread over the years. Holy wow!

Please post the rude email because I'm getting bored of Charlie Sheen these days. This sounds even crazier.

New flash: Letterhead Fonts are now on MyFonts with what seems like a rather generous license agreement.

I was hopeful too, Ray, but it's just 15 families, all of them by Chuck Davis. Maybe he's testing the waters for bringing the rest on board. I hope MyFonts' volume sways him.

Interesting to read this thread years later. The idea of 3rd party software instead of standard font files is only mildly annoying. I'd work like a dog to get at the font file (if it existed) but only as a technical challenge.

I guess the irritation level depends on your usage of PDFs. I convert all fonts to outlines anyway when sending a PDF, but that's for signs, logos, that sort of thing. It avoids issues with the font not having embed permissions or with an identically named (but worse) local font replacing the intended font. But I can see where outlines are unacceptible for a technical document or book.

It may be my imagination but, just for the hell of it I tried looking for letterhead fonts in shady places online, torrents and whatnot... and they may be a little harder to find than others. You can get stuff like gotham or champion script, but good luck finding unlovable or packard script.

But I have no doubt that if someone cared a lot about it, any protection system will be cracked. If anyone doubts the resourceful nature of the guys who do this, spend a minute reading http://insecure.org/news/cryptanalysis_of_contents_scrambling_system.htm

...now about those rude phone calls and emails...

I have read through this post and have this to say. While I whole heartedly agree that designers have the right to and should protect their intellectual property, the case can be made, that a lot of the "protected material" on Letterhead Fonts is actually the intellectual property of others. Namely Frank Atkinson, Al Imelli, and the Rawson Evans Glass Co. to name but a few. Some of these "fonts" have been around for well on 100 years and started out as typestyles for signwriting. Which begs the question - Who is protecting the intellectual property rights of the actual real designers of these typefaces?

So, anyone have updates on this? When purchasing through MyFonts are we now free of the weird baggage that came with buying directly from Letterhead?

@Aluminum et. al. -

"All Letterhead fonts on [MyFonts] are sold in our standard, 'ready-to-download and use' formats, and from what I can see, available as Webfonts as well."

We have 28 LHF packages listed, 23 of which are for sale.

MyFonts does not currently sell anything that could be defined as crippleware.