Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!cica!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!spies!zorch!xanthian From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) Newsgroups: comp.fonts Subject: Re: Are fonts illegal to copy?? Keywords: Macintosh, postscript, fonts, laserwriter Message-ID: <1990Jul1.205518.12783@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Date: 1 Jul 90 20:55:18 GMT References: <7677@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> Distribution: usa Organization: SF Bay Public-Access Unix Lines: 35 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.