BL.JPL@forsythe.stanford.edu (Jonathan Lavigne) (06/30/90)
In article <HEMSTREE.90Jun29220024@handel.handel.CS.Colostate.Edu>, hemstree@handel.CS.Colostate.Edu (charles he hemstreet) writes: > >Is it possible to scan fonts from a book (book of fonts) and then use >some program to make them into real postscript fonts for a MacIntosh? >Is this illegal? The April 1990 issue of Publish magazine had an article on how copyright law applies to images and typefaces. On p. 82, the author says that the design of a typeface is not itself covered by copyright law. "As a result, different type founders [sic] can sell their version of the same type families under different names. Adobe's Palatino, for example, is almost exactly the same as ITC's Zapf Calligraphic. Likewise, you're free to use font-editing programs in order to modify an existing typeface design; that wouldn't be considered infringement." What is copyrightable is program code that creates a typeface. Jonathan Lavigne BL.JPL@RLG.STANFORD.EDU Research Libraries Group Stanford University
dhosek@sif.claremont.edu (Hosek, Donald A.) (06/30/90)
In article <HEMSTREE.90Jun29220024@handel.handel.CS.Colostate.Edu>, hemstree@handel.CS.Colostate.Edu (charles he hemstreet) writes... >Is it possible to scan fonts from a book (book of fonts) and then use >some program to make them into real postscript fonts for a MacIntosh? >Is this illegal? Under US copyright law fonts per se are not copyrightable. A METAFONT or PostScript program to generate a font can be copyrighted, but the design itself can only be afforded very limited protection under a design patent. There are quite a few people in the typesetting world (myself among them) who do not approve of this state of affairs and are working to get it changed. -dh --- Don Hosek TeX, LaTeX, and Metafont Consulting and dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu production work. Free Estimates. dhosek@ymir.bitnet uunet!jarthur!ymir Phone: 714-625-0147
xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (07/02/90)
dhosek@sif.claremont.edu writes: >hemstree@handel.CS.Colostate.Edu (charles he hemstreet) writes... > >>Is it possible to scan fonts from a book (book of fonts) and then use >>some program to make them into real postscript fonts for a MacIntosh? >>Is this illegal? > >Under US copyright law fonts per se are not copyrightable. A >METAFONT or PostScript program to generate a font can be >copyrighted, but the design itself can only be afforded very >limited protection under a design patent. > >There are quite a few people in the typesetting world (myself >among them) who do not approve of this state of affairs and are >working to get it changed. > >-dh > Sadly, there is a huge and probably irreconcilable conflict between the quite understandable desire of a font foundry to protect their fonts' designs, and the rights guaranteed under the first amendment. It doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to forsee censorship being accomplished by denying the intended publisher of a wildly unpopular tract license to use _any_ font. For example, could Rushdie's Satanic Verses have found a font anywhere, with the Moslem world promising to car bomb the consenting foundry? Surely, at the least, he couldn't have found an Arabic font anywhere in the Moslem world. I think this is an area that needs very, very careful treatment. Like the ability to tax, the ability to license is the ability to destroy. Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>
rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) (07/03/90)
xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: > Sadly, there is a huge and probably irreconcilable conflict between the > quite understandable desire of a font foundry to protect their fonts' > designs, and the rights guaranteed under the first amendment. No, there is absolutely no conflict. If I produce a work (any work) which can be copyrighted, that does not deny you freedom of speech or of the press. It only denies you the right to use the work I have copyrighted without my permission. The ability to protect certain particular styles of letterforms does not in any way extend to protecting the letters themselves, any more than a copyright on a picture of a tree, or a poem about a tree, denies you the right to possess, give, show, photograph, paint, or write about trees. > It doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to forsee censorship being > accomplished by denying the intended publisher of a wildly unpopular tract > license to use _any_ font... It certainly takes more imagination than *I've* got. If such censorship could be achieved, it could be achieved right now, today, by refusing to sell the printing equipment to anyone "wildly unpopular." Note also that there are many printing devices which operate with fonts which have been in general, widespread use long enough that it wouldn't be possible to copyright them. (Consider typical dot-matrix printers.) Or are you suggesting that a provision for copyrighting fonts would somehow cause the copyright holders to institute a system of examining the motives of possible end users prior to selling a printing device using the fonts??? That too is beyond my limited powers of imagination. Fonts can be copyrighted in Europe. Have there been any abuses of the sort Kent is suggesting in Europe as a result? -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd (303)449-2870 ...Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
isaak@imagen.UUCP (Mark Isaak) (07/03/90)
in article <1990Jul1.205518.12783@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>, xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) says: [re copyrighting fonts] > Sadly, there is a huge and probably irreconcilable conflict between the > quite understandable desire of a font foundry to protect their fonts' > designs, and the rights guaranteed under the first amendment. > > It doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to forsee censorship being > accomplished by denying the intended publisher of a wildly unpopular tract > license to use _any_ font. Certainly extending copyrights to font designs would leave lots of fonts in public domain; many fonts are well over 100 years old. In fact, my [non-expert] interpretation would be that the _ex post facto_ prohibition would prevent you from copyrighting any font which is already in public domain, which at them moment means every existing font. Why were copyrights disallowed for fonts in the first place? Am I missing something? -- Mark Isaak {decwrl,sun}!imagen!isaak or imagen!isaak@decwrl.dec.com "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." - Nietzsche
amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker) (07/03/90)
In article <9790@pt.cs.cmu.edu>, tgl@zog.cs.cmu.edu (Tom Lane) writes: > The > existing copyright law doesn't seem to have a major problem with people > ripping off novels by making small changes, so perhaps it will work OK > for font designs. One problem with this comparison is that a novel is an end product, while a font is not. It is true that fonts are much more mass-market items these days than they were when the Linotype was state of the art, but they are still more like tools than they are like books. Personally, I favor the "design patent" approach... -- Amanda Walker InterCon Systems Corporation -- "I can only assume this is not the first-class compartment." --Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
flaps@dgp.toronto.edu (Alan J Rosenthal) (07/03/90)
xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: >It doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to forsee censorship being >accomplished by denying the intended publisher of a wildly unpopular tract >license to use _any_ font. For example, could Rushdie's Satanic Verses >have found a font anywhere, with the Moslem world promising to car bomb the >consenting foundry? Surely, at the least, he couldn't have found an Arabic >font anywhere in the Moslem world. I don't think this point is valid. Certainly he had to find a publisher, and certainly the publisher had previously purchased the fonts.
esf00@uts.amdahl.com (Elliott S. Frank) (07/06/90)
In article <1990Jul2.180307.1697@ico.isc.com> >rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) follows up to an article in which: >xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: > >> Sadly, there is a huge and probably irreconcilable conflict between the >> quite understandable desire of a font foundry to protect their fonts' >> designs, and the rights guaranteed under the first amendment. > >No, there is absolutely no conflict. If I produce a work (any work) which >can be copyrighted, that does not deny you freedom of speech or of the >press. It only denies you the right to use the work I have copyrighted >without my permission. To misquote A.J. Leibling: "Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one." Back in the days of movable type, if you couldn't find a printer willing to print your manifestoes ("prior censorship"??) you had to buy, build or borrow your own press and type. If the manufacturer/distributor of the press/type you wanted was not in agreement, you cuold go away empty handed. The most important posession of a political party is its presses. Read the stories coming out of the USSR: the Communist Party is willing (in various degrees) to give up its monopoly on power, the special privileges for its members, even the various mansions (dachas) that it owns, but not its presses and its newspapers. It would be a pity if you couldn't print your diatribe in a particular Old Style if no one will sell/rent/loan you a copy, but there's always T*ms R*mn or H*lv in almost every laser printer sold. -- Elliott Frank ...!{hplabs,ames,sun}!amdahl!esf00 (408) 746-6384 or ....!{bnrmtv,drivax,hoptoad}!amdahl!esf00 [the above opinions are strictly mine, if anyone's.] [the above signature may or may not be repeated, depending upon some inscrutable property of the mailer-of-the-week.]
xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (07/06/90)
In article <c0Sc026ob5ti01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> esf00@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Elliott S. Frank) writes: >In article <1990Jul2.180307.1697@ico.isc.com> >>rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) follows up to an article in which: >>xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: >> >>> Sadly, there is a huge and probably irreconcilable conflict between the >>> quite understandable desire of a font foundry to protect their fonts' >>> designs, and the rights guaranteed under the first amendment. >> >>No, there is absolutely no conflict. If I produce a work (any work) which >>can be copyrighted, that does not deny you freedom of speech or of the >>press. It only denies you the right to use the work I have copyrighted >>without my permission. > >To misquote A.J. Leibling: > "Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one." > >Back in the days of movable type, if you couldn't find a printer willing >to print your manifestoes ("prior censorship"??) you had to buy, build >or borrow your own press and type. If the manufacturer/distributor of the >press/type you wanted was not in agreement, you cuold go away empty >handed. The most important posession of a political party is its >presses. Read the stories coming out of the USSR: the Communist Party >is willing (in various degrees) to give up its monopoly on power, >the special privileges for its members, even the various mansions (dachas) >that it owns, but not its presses and its newspapers. > >It would be a pity if you couldn't print your diatribe in a particular >Old Style if no one will sell/rent/loan you a copy, but there's >always T*ms R*mn or H*lv in almost every laser printer sold. Probably not safe to assume the "existing art" will remain available; here's a snippet of a letter from some email I got, and my reply: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | >Well, for Roman fonts, the argument doesn't hold, of course, since there | >exists a large number of public domain fonts. I agree, however, that because | >of the fundamental importance of written language, protection for fonts | >is a particularly sticky issue. | | Yeah, and as the computerization of printing continues until all the lead | presses are in museums, all the fonts will eventually be ones out of font | foundries, which means all computer designed, and thus, at the code level, | all copyrightable or patentable. Now the protection supplied would mean | nothing if it did not protect against unlicensed _use_ of the fonts (else | I could purchase one code copy and release a million font instances to | spoil the market for the foundry's product), and that will wipe out all | the public domain designs, since if they _are_ protected, then the license | question arises again; if they are _not_ protected because public domain, | then there will be no market motivation to make them available in computer | usable form in the first place. | | Thanks for your note! Now back to rn to see the public reactions! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And I say it again; the power to license is the power to destroy! If you don't believe me, come see all the adult book stores being driven out of business locally because the newly enforced licensing restrictions and zoning rules happen not to match any real existing piece of property available for lease or purchase within the city limits, and no variances are being granted. Coincidence? Just happens to be a business with an unpopular viewpoint? Right. Want to buy a nice piece of Florida real estate? Bone dry. ;-) Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>
amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker) (07/07/90)
In article <1990Jul6.092719.18438@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>, xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: > And I say it again; the power to license is the power to destroy! Perhaps, but I still do not see that this presents a practical problem. Computer printers generally come with an implicit license to use the fonts that are built into the printer, if nothing else. Also, even the most restrictive font licenses only govern the circumstances of rendering, not the purpose of the text being rendered. Look at it this way: if a font is offered for sale to the public, anybody can buy it. You don't need to show ID at your local computer store... This is even more true if fonts are copyrighted, since the main reason fonts (and software) are licensed, and not sold, is to get around holes in the copyright law. I think that your argument is a red herring. -- Amanda Walker <amanda@intercon.com> InterCon Systems Corporation -- Entropy requires no maintenance.
werner@aecom.yu.edu (Craig Werner) (07/17/90)
In article <c0Sc026ob5ti01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com>, esf00@uts.amdahl.com (Elliott S. Frank) writes: > In article <1990Jul2.180307.1697@ico.isc.com> > >rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) follows up to an article in which: > >xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: > > > >> Sadly, there is a huge and probably irreconcilable conflict between the > >> quite understandable desire of a font foundry to protect their fonts' > >> designs, and the rights guaranteed under the first amendment. > > As was pointed out a long time ago, if you want to duplicate Times Roman, you can get a copy of the Times of London and digitize it. If you want to call it "Times Roman," then you have to pay royalties to Linotype. That's why there are fonts called "Swiss" and "Geneva," sans-serif fonts that are almost but not quite 'Helvetica.' -- Craig Werner (future MD/PhD, 5.5 years down, 2.5 to go) werner@aecom.YU.EDU -- Albert Einstein College of Medicine (1935-14E Eastchester Rd., Bronx NY 10461, 212-931-2517) "Beware of Yuppies bearing Uzis."