Hacker News Reader

Comment by propter_hoc | Hacker News Reader

I don't get the outrage here.

Basically, this Web design company used a proprietary font to make a website for a client, that they then included as a self-hosted font file for the website that they deployed. They only had access to this font through their Creative Cloud SaaS license, which almost certainly doesn't let them take the proprietary IP they have access to and resell it in a package to anyone that pays them.

I don't think it's unreasonable of the owner of the IP to ensure that their IP doesn't effectively become freeware just because they signed a bulk license with Adobe. It would be like, because you licensed your song to Spotify for a per-play fee, that would mean anyone can rip it from Spotify and use it in an ad without a license?

It also doesn't seem onerous for the web designers to ask their clients to buy a copy of the font that they specified. I've had to do that for websites before.

View on HN

OP states "We have used the font Proxima Nova on a website for our client using the Adobe Web Project method."

This method is not self-hosting. If I go click the "add to web project" button, it gives me a `<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://use.typekit.net/foobar.css">` embed to use.

Wow, OP is on fire. Sounds like another lawsuit could be coming their way.

Typefaces aren’t meant to be IP in most countries. So to me, companies rent-seeking on fonts is gross

What? These things take ludicrous amounts of time to produce, on top of several years of experience to gain the baseline skills required to make a typeface that's even remotely palatable.

We absolutely should preserve commercial incentive for people to make IP of such importance (both functionally and artistically).

How anyone can disagree with you is just bizarre.

Don't like paid fonts? Don't use them.

Don't think they're "meant to be IP" ? Too bad; they are.

Don't think fonts matter ? Use Comic Sans MS the rest of your life, go ahead.

If I develop a website for someone and pay for Oracle, that does not grant free Oracle licenses to everyone I hand my work off to. Why would anyone think that ? s/Oracle/OpenAI/g. s/Oracle/whatever you make money on/g.

Just because one doesn't value the work of font creators doesn't mean the rest of us must commoditize their work.

You might think there are huge networks of font pirates creating even-better fonts than those run-of-the-mill paid fonts, but it's just a fantasy.

If we made it illegal to charge money for, we would have just as many good fonts as we do now. We should just change the law to outlaw making money this way.

What? Why would someone spend decades of their lives mastering a craft like typeface design if there were no way to make money from it? How could someone justify it?

That is like asking how could linux exist. Use your brain and imagine. We would likely have many more great fonts than we do today if you outlawed charging for them because people would no long have a protectionist mindset. It would be easy for people to modify existing ones so they worked better for various issues, and it wouldn't stop people creating beautiful new ones for whatever reason they wanted like art... or like linux. Sometimes the world works better without capitalism though that might be hard to believe.

You are aware that Linux is in fact supported by commercial enterprises of various sizes all up and down the value chain, right?

And yeah, it’s great that we happened upon a quasi-religious movement in software that has managed to align itself with commercial interests. OSS, in my opinion, will go down as one of humanity’s greatest achievements.

Want to know why it’s such an achievement? Because it was profoundly unlikely and continues to be difficult in all sorts of ways.

Question: What’s your job and your approximate hourly rate? Is it something that requires years or decades of training and do you charge $0?

Yes, I'm aware, but if none of those companies existed linux would still be doing great. Same way that if we made it so you couldn't charge for fonts the entire ecosystem would still be doing great. We don't need the rent seeking.

So what do you do and what do you charge for it?

Give me a break, we are talking about fonts here. If there was never another font created 99.9% of the world wouldn’t notice or care.

Exactly, this is why every typeface you see in the world is a free one. /s

Nothing is stopping people from making nor using free fonts and yet many people and organizations freely choose to spend thousands of dollars on something that they perceive to be "better."

Typefaces ≠ fonts

This is evidenced by the fact that no one seems willing to clone popular typefaces because making a font is a lot of work even if you have a guide.

> Typefaces ≠ fonts

I always get angry about "x but on a computer" patents, and the "typefaces ... but on a computer" court case lights a similar fire in my belly.

> This is evidenced by the fact that no one seems willing to clone popular typefaces because making a font is a lot of work even if you have a guide.

The 1,000,000 Helvetica clones out there disagree with this statement

Unlike a patent, a copyright only protects a specific expression. There's nothing stopping you from using said typeface on a computer. If it's so easy to clone, why not just clone Proxima Nova and be in the clear?

What exactly is copyright law stopping people from doing? It's literally only protecting their work in the font. If they did a lot of work, you can't call selling it "rent-seeking" and surely it's worth protecting and incentivizing. If they did little work, then little is protected. Anybody can use it by doing an even smaller amount of work.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com