[OpenFontLibrary] Public Domain Fonts due to lack of copyright notice

[Liam R E Quin]

On Thu, 2008-12-25 at 12:03 -0200, minombresbond wrote:
> here Ulrich Stiehl document that compiled more than 1000 Linotype
> fonts which are in public domain since at least January 2008
> 
> http://www.sanskritweb.net/forgers/publicdomain.pdf
> 


> > Compiled by Ulrich Stiehl, Heidelberg 2008
> >
> > Fonts are not copyrightable as "computer programs" ("font software") for the following two simple reasons:
> > Firstly, fonts are no computer programs. Secondly, font designers are no computer programmers.

Clearly this writer is not a copyright lawyer :)

Neither am I, but when Ulrich writes, for example,
[[
OpenType fonts permit of encrypting and embedding hidden private buyer
data, e.g. postal and email address, bank account number, credit card
number etc. When you are connected to the internet, it is easy for
online shops to spy out your private data by reading the fonts installed
on your computer. In this way, online shops also obtain email addresses
for spamming purposes.
]]
you realise we're into tin-foil-hat land.  For what it's worth,
I'll mention that type 1 fonts can be (and sometimes have been)
watermarked too, as well as being able to contain customer data.

On Ulrich's page in general... it seems to me to be about "those
diamonds in that store are really pretty and I want some and they
should share them and so I am going to find a way to pretend that
shoplifting is legal" rather than about encouraging font designers
to consider new community-based business models.

The font industry has had a lot of problems in the past, and some of
these problems will be with us for a long time.  I think a lot of the
problems stemmed from conflicts of interest between font foundries,
printers, and suppliers of printing and typesetting machinery.  For
example, Linotype didn't want people to be able to use their fonts on
their competitors' typesetting machines.  So they used the best
protection they could find at the time -- trademark protection of
font names -- and refused to license the fonts.  Since the outlines
weren't copyright, this led to the competitors creating identical or
very similar fonts with similar names, so that they could sell their
equipment to people demanding the popular fonts of the day. And since
there was no single vendor of fonts that had control of the marketplace,
pretty much everyone ended up doing this, as far as I can tell, in both
directions: refusing to license their own fonts, and making (legal)
copies of other people's designs.

The people who lost out were firstly the customers, dealing with a
plethora of confusing typeface names, and fonts of varying quality,
and secondly the typeface designers, who would not be credited for
the copies at all.

Ulrich's arguments about font software are confused; partly that's
because his sources are confused, anbd partly it's because he has
the (common) idea that the US legal system follows principles that
are intuitive and correct.

In fact, legislators tend to try and re-use existing principles
wherever they can.

Ulrich writes,

[[
> > However, many font buyers are dimwitted, and therefore font sellers make these dimwitted font buyers
> > believe that fonts are "font software" or "computer programs" and make these dimwitted font buyers believe,
> > for instance, that a judge, e.g. Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts, if he draws the letter "O"
> > with a drawing program, is at this very moment a "computer programmer" writing a "computer program"
> > (see below page 2).
]]

but only dim-witted people who didn't respect other's rights :-) would
write like that.

Ulrich also confuses the typeface design with the implementation, the
actual font.  You can go ahead and make a new font based on published
printed typeface samples and you're fine.  Just don't give it the same
name (trademark law).  A truetype font contains instructions, rather
like assembly code, that are executed, so it is certainly a program;
and computer programming skills are these days a part of font design.

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/
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