Its Turkish, like most of the "best" font pirates out there.

Is this true?

hhp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Turkish_piracy

The biggest font pirate site I've found is Turkish...to the point I had considered no longer supporting Turkish. I kid you not.

Simon: funny.

Jeremy, the strategy of not supporting (or better: charging extra for) languages where piracy is rampant is interesting, and not without merit. Speaking of Latin-using languages, most of them don't have unique letters/diacritics (making the idea unworkable -or at least more intractable- for those) but Turkish does have some unique characters.

It's interesting to consider why there's a high degree of [font] piracy among Turks (assuming that's actually true) and the role that Atatürk inadvertently played in the lives of designers of Latin type!

I confess that being Armenian I have long thought of doing something "special" with respect to Turkish support in fonts... But I would need to make sure it comes across as a political statement, not an ethnic bias. On the flip-side, I have to think it's actually politically advantageous for an Armenian to produce fonts that are used a lot (paid or not) by Turks* so it might be better for an Armenian to make sure his fonts support Turkish very well... Dunno.

* In the same way that I was more than happy to give a talk at ISType.
http://www.istype.com/?p=776

hhp

I am somewhat confusticated: do the “original” fonts support Turkish or not? If so, then a knock-off is a knock-off; if not, then there is at least a presenting cause for the piracy. Not that pirates need a good rationalization, but…

I must admit that I overlooked the Turkish character set for many years, until Hasbro Toys commissioned a special version of Boyz R Gross NF, which included Turkish and Greek. Needless to say, the Turkish characters were a breeze, compared to my first foray into Greek characters. Fortunately for me, the good folks at Hasbro were patient: my first Greek alphabet was simply too narrow—who knew?—and they supplied me with the words which needed kerning pairs. Anyhow, it all worked out: I got an impromptu kid Seal of Approval the other day at Wal-mart.

Hrant, waddaya gonna do with the Turks? They have been around for a long time—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turanians—and their sphere of influence is growing progressively smaller. When the Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1492 (sound familiar?), they broke the two-millennium hold of the Greeks on the Hellespont, and shaped world history—for better or for worse—for almost five hundred years after. World War I put paid to most of the divine-right monarchies, and the thoroughly screwed up British political subdivisions of the Ottoman Empire has been having negative effects on geopolitics for almost a hundred years. An independent Kurdistan—the sooner, the better—will leave Turkey with very little of their former turf, which will be a tough nut for the Turks to swallow.

Sorry: I tend to digress...all my fonts support Turkish now, so I think I may be okay.

When I click on the donate button, I'm directed to a Paypal site. There is an e-mail address associated with the paypal account displayed: ali.sarikaya@msn.com (I'm copying it here aware that Google doesn't index typophile anymore ;)

It may be worthwhile to file a complaint with Paypal, so at least the pirates can't collect their donations (if there are any).

I kind of thought the policy here was to not post links to pirate sites...

Yes, the link should be removed.

hhp

It's a difficult thing because it's beneficial for type designers to know the websites involved when their work is pirated. But I guess it shouldn't be public too. Hopefully TypeSnitch will help with this sort of thing.

This is really sad to see.

Maybe you could try contacting USA embassy in Turkey (however this suggestion may sound stupid, it might be more effective then emails).

@hrant

So what do you suggest then?
I.e. in case somebody else found a new font "resource" website, what one should do?
I understand the reason to remove such links from Typophile, but other then that, what's Typophiles suggestion for such cases?

I think TypeSnitch is the best "portal" for this sort of thing.

Even though Typophile is the best place to talk type, there are simply too many people here who like fonts... as long as they're free. Just check out the type-ID action. Or Typophile could start a subscription-based "people who really care about fonts" subforum where nasty sites can be exposed with little worry about promoting piracy.

hhp

Apparently you can no longer edit initial posts? I was attempting to take down the link.

Jens has a good suggestion I am going to follow up on.

I'm not going to pursue the state dept route, but it's a good thought. They are probably a bit busy bracing for a firebombing right now as Turkey is trending further and further away from Ataturk secularism. Interestingly, my father is an expert in international law has actually done treaty negotiations and large labor contracts in Turkey for the US government, so the irony is that if I wanted to go that route I'd have some names at State to start with :). Thank you all for your suggestions.

Talking about and flagging pirate sites like this is certainly of benefit - Just with out the URL.

Sorry, Jeremy - I didn't see your reply above