Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!isis!ico!rcd
From: rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn)
Newsgroups: comp.fonts
Subject: Re: Are fonts illegal to copy??
Summary: wildly imaginative, but...
Message-ID: <1990Jul2.180307.1697@ico.isc.com>
Date: 2 Jul 90 18:03:07 GMT
References: <7677@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> <1990Jul1.205518.12783@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Interactive Systems Corporation, Boulder, CO
Lines: 37

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.