[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>You really should pay, especially for work by small foundries.

You can't copyright the alphabet.

>and it's a huge problem if everyone pirates your work.

I've never pirated a font. Not once have I boarded a ship in the middle of the ocean, gun in hand, taking the crew and cargo of typography hostage.

But more seriously, I acknowledge that it's a problem. It's just not my problem.

[an-honest-moose]

>You can't copyright the alphabet.

You're not paying to use the alphabet, there are plenty of perfectly legible typefaces that are completely free for you to use.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

You can't copyright basic geometric shapes either.

>there are plenty of perfectly legible typefaces that are completely free for you to use.

You mean there are plenty of bezier curved shapes which are within the public domain and no one can stop me. I'm not obligated to surrender my rights so you can turn typography into a business model. If you piss me off, I might just release tools that even stooges can use that copy the shapes out of the otf file, rearrange those completely so that no file fingerprinting will match, and has the user rename the files. I will go to war.

[dhosek]

Legally, typeface designs do not receive protection (which is based on idiotic declarations like “you can’t copyright the alphabet”) but digital font files are considered programs and thus are able to be protected as IP.¹ You can try to justify the theft to yourself but somewhere there’s an individual (or on some occasions many individuals) who spent a long time making decisions about how that typeface should look and choosing the best points to turn it into splines to describe the shape and you decided that your laziness trumps their work.

⸻

1. I would note that bitmap fonts do not receive the same protection as Type 1 or OTF fonts.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>there are plenty of perfectly legible typefaces that are completely free for you to use.

Legally based off the carefully considered positions of philosophers of law like Thomas Jefferson, and others just as renowned, who actually created modern copyright law in the United States, because they weren't trying to set you up to be rent-seeking degenerate scribblers for the next umpteen millennia.

>but digital font files are considered programs

As precedented in case law by degenerate judges who should be brought up on treason charges. They aren't programs in any meaningful sense, culinary recipes are likely closer to programs (they, arguably, run on a Turing-complete machine, the human brain, and have something akin to branching going on once in awhile).

>You can try to justify the theft

What theft? No theft occurred, because I denied no one the possession of their own property. Even the judges and lawyers have to admit that this is at most infringement, so please use that word or just confess here and now that you'rea manipulative liar.

>I would note that bitmap fonts do not receive the same protection as Type 1 or OTF fonts.

What!?!?! Those aren't programs too? Please, consult the computer scientists, they must be informed! Are they also not stored as ones and zeroes?

[anonymous_user9]

Type 1 fonts are PostScript programs, while OTF and TTF fonts use a turing-complete virtual machine to control hinting, ligatures, etc.

[dhosek]

You think a bitmap is a program?

I do not argue with idiots.