@ Jonathan >> Right. Because, at the end of the day, you draw letters. How much did you *think* people were going to pay for that? It’s not exactly adding value, is it? The foundries fucked themselves before anyone else could get a boot in, by choosing to base their income on idle doodles. Yes, and I'm sure you're casting steel beams all day, right ? Jumping out of planes to fight forest fires ? You got your carpal tunnel syndrome the same way he did.
Truck Driver
on Fuck the foundries 
Abi Huynh: It's already possible (and very common) to embed license information in the font file - the OpenType name table includes a text field specifically for "License Description; description of how the font may be legally used, or different example scenarios for licensed use".
Philip Taylor
on Fuck the foundries
@The Real Anon Yes there will likely be some fonts released soon that will fill the market with cheap goods of lower quality that will be allowed to be used online. This is something the type design industry has been dealing with for a long time now (since the move to digital type). There have been tons and tons of cheap fonts for free and for low price (just look at any free font site and some of the stuff on MyFonts). The main point is that there are many trained graphic designers that will license high quality fonts for print use (and often they will commission a custom made typeface for unlimited usage rights within an organization). There will always be people who will use cheap/free fonts, that's fine, but the key thing type designers are now worrying about is how to (a) conceive of a good model that would cater to the sector of the market that do license high quality (print) fonts and (b) do it in a way that doesn't require a mass reorganization of software or font-face (like the Microsoft EOT proposal). A lot of type designers I've spoken to about this just want to have an embedded license (with the domain the typeface was bought for), most software ships with an embedded license agreement, websites have copyright/usage rights in code somewhere (this website has a nice little line indicating "/*dive into minimalism(c)2008 Mark Pilgrim,MIT-licensed including graphics*/") In many ways, some embedded license information could just be an easy way to indicate that you did pay for the right to use the font software. Some type designers are calling for a bit more security, but there are many proposals right now since this discussion will be ongoing for the foreseeable future. I would be happy with font-face using raw font files with an embedded license indicating the domain ... the browsers don't have to change anything or even check if that domain in the license is the one it is used for, it's just a simple act of including the 'contract' in case it does get taken up by someone who has not paid for the right to use the font software. But I know this even this non-intrusive security measure will not appease some foundries and type designers.
@Mark Pilgrim Essentially right now type designers are scrambling to react to this very recent development and just trying to plot a sensible course through this, and this sort of polarizing article really doesn't help things too much by using such tone/language. The points you make are valid and are of concern to all type designers: how to make a distribution model for fonts used on the web. Think of it this way: a type designer would reasonably take issue with a magazine that licensed his/her typeface for print use and then bundled a CD with the magazine containing the raw .otf files ... Another issue is that the development of suitable typefaces for the screen -- here I am talking about text typefaces for screen, not ones used for headers or big titles -- is very expensive due to the very long process of optimizing a typeface through proper hinting. Calling this DRM is immediately polarizing ... when in fact many of the type designers just want to have a way of embedding some licencing details (like the domain a font was purchased for use on) Anyway, Tal Leming lays out many concerns in a very clear and level headed way on his site, and I recommend you read it: http://talleming.com/2009/04/21/web-fonts/
You can strive to achieve security or usability, but not both in equal amounts. They're mutually exclusive goals, but that doesn't mean you can't have a bit of one and more of the other. Your choice.
Andy
on Fuck the foundries
Yes. Fuck all foundries. Except this one. http://arkandis.tuxfamily.org/adffonts.html
Alejandro Nova
on Fuck the foundries
Obviously my earlier comment didn't post, but I wanted to commend the author on a divisive post, much needed. The industry needs it, despite it's complacency. Read Chris Anderson, who predicted the long tail. Everything is going free and if you want to survive on the WWW, then you need to focus on consistency and user experience. DRM obviously is not the answer, though it can be part of the equation. Look at the ITUNES money model and the money they make compared to others in the game. Make it easy for publishers to make money, users to spend it, and make money for yourself and shareholders. Fight the inevitable and become Zune or Rhapsody. You are easily replaced. Not the same industries, but learn the same lessons and stay alive. Personally, I don't care if they fail, I'll make money using Tahoma.
Paddy
on Fuck the foundries
I forgot to mention the fact that web designers have seen their medium proliferate under the tyranny of web-safe fonts while print has been dying under the freedom, still the two have little to do with each other. The point I want to make is that more options will only make the web uglier and less understandable. If Georiga, Times, Arial, and Tahoma don't cut it to express what you want, then seriously, what you're expressing is probably bullshit. Open fonts on an open web will only make it easier to tell the hacks from the knowledgeable. Most of us are hacks.
Paddy again
on Fuck the foundries
Honestly, keep it up man. This argument needs polarizing opinions and a little adult language. If nobody sends a wake up, the Yours of the world will go under and the Ours won't get the good shit. The web makes everything it touches free, see Chris Anderson. If the Yours thinks Our morals will keep up with the technology, then they're more foolish than thinking they can enforce DRM on the WWW. The answer is in the ITunes business model, predictability and user experience will compel people to pay and submit to DRM willingly. A great place might be in getting involved with CSS browser extensions and have a good stake in CSS 3.1 or 4.0. Change the business model already foundries or go the way of Newspapers, playing catch up with no money to play. I feel like time is probably ticking on the window to innovate and get paid. I wonder WWCD. What would Chank do? Ha.
Paddy
on Fuck the foundries
looks like someone is trying to act as middleman in this very debate: http://www.fontsquirrel.com/
david
on Fuck the foundries
To Chris MacGregor I just visited the web site you linked to in your name and unfortunately I saw a lot of stuff, but not your fonts. It would have made better business sense to link to a site with your fonts, as form of promotion and encourage people to donate you money if they have ever used your fonts. I can't say whether it would make a difference, but at this point what do you have to lose? Often you have to give up some control to get some control. This may sound odd, but it is the dilemma of the possible vs the impossible. Basically if you have a price point, or restrictions, that people can't swallow, then they will opt for another less honourable manner of attaining the fonts. This means be trying total control, you ended up with no control. Also be sure to add a URL in the 'about' section of the font, to your site. BTW As a favour, here is a link to your page: http://typeindex.com/ - hopefully it is the right one.
Andre
on Fuck the foundries
The interface of http://openfontlibrary.fontly.org/ is broken. The listing ("Get") only shows one font while the "New uploads" section on the main page has five. So they could well have thousands of fonts but they're just not accessible. And I couldn't find an easy way to submit a bug, short of subscribing to a mailing list. Their openness has room for improvement.
boblia
on Fuck the foundries
'Scuse my lack of fine technical knowledge, but what's wrong with the Acrobat/Reader model? Make the fonts freely available for screen use (and maybe print output, recognising that so many people copy the fonts for that anyway) and just charge for fonts to be used for origination?
peter
on Fuck the foundries
I should also add that, while looking at beautiful typesetting, I came across a list of excellent free fonts. It's old, but still quite useful.
Rogers Cadenhead: It’s kind of a shame that the recording industry doesn’t think like the font industry. If it did, the big companies wouldn’t be selling music online for fear of being pirated, and a lot of independent musicians would be able to flourish in the vacuum.No; this is completely wrong. The situation you describe was the case for several years, and we didn't see indie music replace the major labels. While free fonts are close enough to commercial fonts for most purposes, music is pretty much the opposite of fungible. Most people don't want to listen to some random music; they want to listen to their favorite bands that they've heard on the radio.
Anon: Why would anyone else pay $100 for the same font rather than just taking it? In the gaming world, _binary_ copies of a game typically start at $100 and only last at that price point for one year due to rampant illicit copying.No; that's wrong, and I think it explains some of the problems here. Most software is piratable pretty quickly; if people are going to pirate it; they will. If they're going to support the publishers; they will--even if it's available online. Price points for new games clearly aren't dropped in response to widespread illicit availability; if they were, they'd drop precipitously right after release.
How long do you think people would be willing to pay that price if the _source_ code were readily available?Similarly, the entire Hoefler & Frere-Jones collection is available illegaly (it took me about thirty seconds to bring up a copy) already. So, clearly people are still willing to pay whatever price they pay to use it, even though the source code is available. This is what Mark is trying to explain. You're worried that people will use the fonts illegally. They're already doing that. And splitting hairs between "they won't sell them" and "they won't sell them for any price short of astronomical" is flatly ridiculous. If the font owners price themselves out of the market, that's their own damned problem; the problem is certainly not that every web designer in the world is trying to do something insane.
Jacques Distler: you need to argue that 1) This market is indeed lucrative (and, sufficiently so that moving into it will outweigh the costs). 2) Moving into this new market will not hurt sales in their existing (proven to be lucrative) market.1) They're currently making no money at all. Some money is greater than no money. 2) Whatever license they sell to web designers, it won't allow all of the uses that an unlimited royalty-free license would. Unless most of the sales of these (incredibly expensive!) unlimited royalty-free licenses are to people who just want to use them for simple web design purposes, they're not biting into their existing market.
This is one of the advantages that open source software (and in this case, fonts) have over those developed by companies. Companies need time to adapt their software/fonts licensing models and then distribute them, whereas free software allow you to do whatever you wish, thus not having to adapt at all.
"very true, so if you want to only have free type for the rest of forever, you should care about foundries doing well also. or else you’re only going to get amateur type in the future." All professionals were amateurs at some time. This means that amateurs learn and become better. I'd rather be left with a bunch of programmatic art I have the freedom to share and improve than a bunch of proprietors dictating terms and art to me.
@Mark """And this rant is my statement that I’m done trying. Real people — even professionals like Zeldman — have been trying to buy from these foundries for YEARS. Note the very bit I quoted: “I want to use your ITC Franklin in a site I’m designing.” Zeldman WANTS to be a customer. He WANTS to throw money at them. They’ve said no, consistently and unapologetically. So fuck them. They deserve what they get.""" What kind of messed up logic is this? (a) Wanting to be a customer and (b) wanting to throw money at them does not mean a thing, if they don't want to deal under those *specific* terms and at that *specific* price. Are you seriously arguing that they should not be able to set *their* terms and *their* price for *their* products? It's up to them to decide if not licensing their fonts for web use means losing money. Up to them, as in "not up to you".
foljs
on Fuck the foundries
Your words "They still think they’re in the business of shuffling little bits of metal around" suggests foundries haven't moved with the times. I'll explain why they've gone backwards. I do print with little bits of metal: letterpress printing. I see a guy locally who casts type. He charges, say, $55 for a fount of Bembo -- a strange case of the metal form being cheaper than the digital form. He puts no restriction at all on what I can do with it ... I can print posters, cards, I can even photograph it and put it on the web. It seems that foundries have applied these restrictions well after they stopped selling metal type. I'll say that I think type designers should be paid for their work and it is a specialised task. Remember, though, that some of our most popular faces were re-drawn and developed eons ago. Monotype drew Bembo back in 1929...I doubt the original designer has seen much from recent purchases.
"There will, soon, be a market for web-fonts, where none really existed before. What’s not so clear is that the dollar size of that market will ever be comparable to that of the print-font market." We're talking about professional designers print designers and web designers, so the people who will be using web fonts will be the same people, or colleagues of the same people, who are currently using print fonts. It would stand to reason that the market would support a similar price per font per website. The market may not be as large as print fonts, or it may end up larger - but either way, it's additional revenue for little or no work, and as I have explained before, with little increase in lost sales due to piracy due to the target audience. "It’s rather telling that both Mark and most of the commenters here have focussed their remarks on the alternative posed by free fonts to fill that niche. What that indicates to me is a (perhaps unconscious) estimation on their part that the potential dollar size of that market is small." Read "free" as "free to use how you want once you've paid for it". If people are talking about free-as-in-beer fonts, that's because that's the only option available at this stage. "if there was serious money to be made, there would be plenty of eager new entrants into the market." If foundries don't sort this out, there will be; once fonts in websites become mainstream, web designers will be screaming out for affordable fonts to use in their website. They don't even have to be that great, just good enough, and people will step in to fill the void. But as I have said before, once that happens the foundries then have to play catchup, competing on a playing field that has already been defined by amateurs and semi-pros. "Good enough" fonts are free now, and sooner or later reasonable quality fonts will be available for the web at prices that the market can afford, so it just seems to make sense for the foundries to get in at the ground level, set their own pricing and licensing rules to play by, and continue the dominance that they've enjoyed in print. If they don't want to, then everybody loses out: they lose potential sales, and we'll have to wait for the alternatives. As Mark so eloquently put it, "Your Fonts are superior to Our Fonts in every conceivable way, except one: WE CAN’T FUCKING USE THEM" "Look how successful that strategy has been for the Recording Industry. You really think the font foundries want to go down that road?" That was my point a while back - you need the carrot and stick. They only used the stick; they tried to sue people into submission without offering an alternative. For years I've wanted to buy DRM-free MP3s that I could play on whatever device I wanted, without it having to phone home to an authentication server that could be turned off, without me being limited to some arbitrary number of times I can copy it between my own machines. I just wanted to buy the music and use it how I wanted. It has taken what, at least 10 years for the recording industry to allow the likes of Amazon to start selling DRM-free MP3s. Only in that 10 years, their potential customers have gone off and found other means, namely piracy and paying - yes, paying - slightly dubious russian sites. People wanted to buy, but they couldn't, so the recording industry not only lost out on 10 years of sales, but they lost the good will of their customers, which will have a far longer-reaching impact. If you still disagree with what I'm saying, meet me in the middle, where my point is simply this: things are changing, and right now it looks like foundries aren't interested. Unless their position changes, and changes to something realistic and practical (ie not loaded with flawed DRM that requires every browser to be updated), it can only ever cause us problems and lose them sales.
The Real Anon
on Fuck the foundries
Ye, agree, but ok... lets stop talking about money this thread is beyond that, its not the point that as type designer i won't make huge bucks or OMG i see huge market in web lets blindstep there, believe me thats not the case. Type designers want a more clear path, on top of all is their work, and thats smth you should all pay some respect. As result and as nature of this work, licences are their only weapon, unless if you ask here ok lets screw all their business. Personally i dont care that much for piracy because the people who will want a font, a custom lettering, custom fonts, they know their way. And just as you comparing this to music industry, you forget one fact Last 5years the vinyl business have raised again at high levels. MP3? CD? who cares... its quality that matters at the end. -Cheers
-type.nasos
on Fuck the foundries
The only way you can do it is by licensing and litigating.That is the worst possible solution. You don't actually make any money that way (though the lawyer do quite well). All you succeed in doing is pissing off your customers (and would-be customers). Look how successful that strategy has been for the Recording Industry. You really think the font foundries want to go down that road?
Ignore the demise of the print business, that’s a distractionIt's not a distraction. It's rather central to your argument whether "People who bought print fonts in the past will continue to buy them in the future," or, conversely, whether the font foundries are in imminent danger of going the way of "the music industry or the newspaper industry." There will, soon, be a market for web-fonts, where none really existed before. What's not so clear is that the dollar size of that market will ever be comparable to that of the print-font market. It's rather telling that both Mark and most of the commenters here have focussed their remarks on the alternative posed by free fonts to fill that niche. What that indicates to me is a (perhaps unconscious) estimation on their part that the potential dollar size of that market is small. The barriers to entry (aside, obviously, from the possession of a talent for font-design) to that market are low. And so one would think that, if there was serious money to be made, there would be plenty of eager new entrants into the market. Instead, you're telling me about how Real Soon Now, free fonts are going to be nearly as good as the commercial ones. Striking, no?
"Type designers want to promote their fonts in web designers But….. they wait until certain ye more secure solution wil be suggested" - type.nasos That's the point - by the very nature of the problem, there can't be a secure solution. Because the font needs to be decoded by the browser by every visitor, any kind of DRM can and will be bypassed with ease. The only way you can do it is by licensing and litigating.
The Real Anon
on Fuck the foundries
conversation started walkin on same circle. The point i disagree, well its not actually disagreement but. > Web designers need more quality pro fonts (custom font is different matter) that lead us to web designers wait from the foundries to take some licence actions fast. On the other hand type designers small foundries >Type designers want to promote their fonts in web designers But..... they wait until certain ye more secure solution wil be suggested There are lot of discussion about that, lot of suggestion.. but the fact is that as web designers, so theirselves are waiting ... i can easily keep it up like this so eveyone will say fuck you to a different direction. Easy to blame smone ah? really lot of staff have been said here, start see the whole project from all sides not only from yours. Lot of problems to be solved.
-type.nasos
on Fuck the foundries
"If (as I have understood), it is legal (under copyright law) to print off a font sample, scan it, and use the resulting bitmaps as one wishes, then I don’t buy your “people, who want to steal stuff, will steal it anyway” argument. What I have described is not stealing (in any legal sense)." Ahh, sorry, I understand what you're saying now - yeah, I can see how someone producing a corporate newsletter will trawl the internet to find a site with their corporate font, print the page out, scan it in, cut up each character and stitch them back together in the right order in photoshop. If we let the fonts get sent out along with web pages, I can see now how it's totally different to downloading them from BitTorrent - the foundries would be totally screwed. I've been so stupid, font print license sales would dive - it would be fontageddon. But you can't seriously think that what you're proposing would damage existing font sales? The people who buy font licenses at the moment are professionals and organisations who use legal versions of photoshop and word. If you're in a position to care whether something is legal or not, you aren't going to go to the ridiculous lengths of taking a screenshot of a webpage to get their fonts. People who bought print fonts in the past will continue to buy them in the future, and people who didn't buy them will continue to get them from BitTorrent. "But it clearly would undermine the font foundries’ print business ... it is still far from clear that embracing the web-fonts market would do anything to save the font foundries from the predicted demise of their print business." Ok, we clearly disagree. Ignore the demise of the print business, that's a distraction - although I never said it would die, just that it would shrink and the foundries would have to play catchup. Let's just leave it with the facts: * The technology for delivering fonts is here and will be mainstream soon * Web designers will want custom fonts to use in their websites * Most clients who have paid for a print license won't be able to afford a royalty-free license for the web * Foundries can't protect their fonts if they're distributed through websites. DRM won't prevent piracy; the only way is with a carrot and stick approach: offer an alternative, and back it up with litigation * Unless foundries come up with a suitable alternative, web designers will either pirate the font, use a free/cheaper alternative, or stick with the web-safe fonts - none of which will bring the foundries any money * We're right at the beginning of this change, and if foundries move now, they can corner the market and squeeze out the cheap and free competition before it's a threat. Actually, on second thoughts, no. Foundries: keep doing what you're doing. Mark was right. If the foundries are unable to compare their situation to the music industry or the newspaper industry and notice the parallels, if they're too short-sighted to realise that their marketplace is about to change, if they can't see that they're not offering what their customers need, then yes; fuck the foundries.
The Real Anon
on Fuck the foundries
But as has been said before, all discussion about illegal or immoral use of fonts is really just academic - embedding a font on your website doesn’t give visitors anything they couldn’t already find on BitTorrent. Anybody who is willing to pay for a font for print now will still be willing to pay for a font for print then.Can we please, at least for the sake of discussion, distinguish between "illegal" and "immoral"? Above and beyond the restrictions of copyright --- I don't see how there can be any legally-binding font-use license restrictions on the visitors to a website. If (as I have understood), it is legal (under copyright law) to print off a font sample, scan it, and use the resulting bitmaps as one wishes, then I don't buy your "people, who want to steal stuff, will steal it anyway" argument. What I have described is not stealing (in any legal sense). But it clearly would undermine the font foundries' print business. (Either that, or -- which is perfectly possible -- I have simply misunderstood how font licensing works, now.) Moreover, I simply don't buy your "their print business is doomed anyway" line. It is based on a long chain of hypotheticals, each of which is disputable. And, even if every one of those hypothetical were correct, it is still far from clear that embracing the web-fonts market would do anything to save the font foundries from the predicted demise of their print business.
It's kind of a shame that the recording industry doesn't think like the font industry. If it did, the big companies wouldn't be selling music online for fear of being pirated, and a lot of independent musicians would be able to flourish in the vacuum.
"Is the current (print-based) business model of the font foundries “unsustainable”? If so, why?" Because they've been unchallenged in the past; if you want a good font for your printed product, you need to go to a foundry - which is fine, like Mark said, their fonts are far superior to free fonts. However, the internet changes the playing field. Foundries are currently up against free fonts which are mediocre at best, but as commercial web designers become aware of increased browser capabilities regarding fonts, they will want to use them. Free font producers will see the potential market, and improve the quality of their work, perhaps even selling them with reasonably-priced web licenses. Then there will be a real alternative to font foundries. The web designers will then turn to their clients and say "Your house font is going to be $xx thousands because we need to buy a royalty-free license. The alternative is to use this cheaper alternative that's not quite as good, but looks similar." Perhaps a few large organisations will be able to pay the royalty-free license, but the majority will just go for the free option. Then you'll have your potential customers saying "Why should we pay $xx hundreds for a site license for this font, when we're using this similar free one on our site?" Of course, the big corporations will still want their custom fonts, but we're not talking about them. We're talking about the small to medium sized businesses, who will go to a small to medium sized branding company, who in turn will move to quality free fonts. Everyone likes to save money, and when there's a free alternative that's good enough, they'll move. "Perhaps you wish to argue that they are “leaving money on the table” by failing to expand into a new market of web fonts. If so, you need to argue that 1) This market is indeed lucrative (and, sufficiently so that moving into it will outweigh the costs)." Hundreds of millions of websites. At a guess, at least hundreds of thousands of professionally-designed websites for organisations, who would be potential customers for a font. Literal cost to the foundries to start selling web fonts to them: creating a new license, and changing their websites to let people buy under that alternative license. Or just change the existing licenses to allow print and web use. "2) Moving into this new market will not hurt sales in their existing (proven to be lucrative) market." You raise an interesting point regarding bitmaps. I'm not a lawyer, but my guess is that it could be covered by licensing; for example, the website using the font would be licensed to give the visitor a free license to view any content on their website and only their website, and not for any other use. But as has been said before, all discussion about illegal or immoral use of fonts is really just academic - embedding a font on your website doesn't give visitors anything they couldn't already find on BitTorrent. Anybody who is willing to pay for a font for print now will still be willing to pay for a font for print then. The whole argument boils down to this: piracy happens, technologies and needs change; adapt your business model to make it easier for people to get exactly what they want, otherwise they'll go somewhere else and you'll lose a potential sale.
The Real Anon
on Fuck the foundries
When I was trying to clarify my thoughts on this, I ended up going back to a simple point: web browsers don't enforce copyright restrictions for the countless other file types on the web, and I've not heard a compelling argument for fonts being a unique exception. I'm a web developer, and the client-side layer (HTML/CSS/JavaScript) of my work isn't protected by DRM (there's even a View Source feature to encourage snooping), yet no one I know would have it any other way. So it's perfectly reasonable and consistent for web browsers to allow DRM-free font embedding, and it's up to the font foundries to adapt to this. If they choose to reject the new opportunities, pushing web developers towards free/indie fonts, then so be it.
Across the industries you see people trying to hold on to their unsustainable business models,Is the current (print-based) business model of the font foundries "unsustainable"? If so, why? Perhaps you wish to argue that they are "leaving money on the table" by failing to expand into a new market of web fonts. If so, you need to argue that 1) This market is indeed lucrative (and, sufficiently so that moving into it will outweigh the costs). 2) Moving into this new market will not hurt sales in their existing (proven to be lucrative) market. Which poses a question (which I hope someone here can answer). My understanding is that only the font source code is protected by copyright. Not the shapes. Anyone can produce a bitmap from a copyrighted font (or multiple bitmaps at multiple resolutions), and use that at will. The question then arises: why would any print customer ever pay a second license fee to the foundries? I presume you could purchase the font (with the cheapest license possible) and then make bitmaps from it, which you could use to your heart's content. Presumably, the answer is that there's some EULA that prevents that. If so, then a second question arises. If the font foundry gets into the web fonts business (with whatever terms imposed on the website author), what prevents visitors to the site from downloading the font (for which they have not agreed to any EULA), and creating the aforementioned bitmaps? In other words, why would anyone ever purchase a print license ever again, if they could (perfectly legally, as I understand it), manufacture bitmaps of the font, obtained over the web?
"It’s not published because the rights you want are royalty-free rights to fonts; those rights are typically sold for much, much more than most people are willing to pay" No, we want a license to use a font on our website that is comparable to what we'd have to pay if we wanted to produce something in print. Slap whatever you need onto the top to make youselves happy that we won't be naughty, ie one domain per license, display a license ID on the site, report to a central licensing registry, whatever. Just make it affordable. You say that large organisations are able to afford the fees; good for them. However, the majority of small to medium businesses who want a brochure site can't justify the kind of numbers you're talking about. They will either not use your font, or find a free alternative: either way, it's a lost sale. "Why would anyone else pay $100 for the same font rather than just taking it?" For the same reason people buy software and games and music: because it's illegal, and they want to do the right thing. Not to mention that if they use a "stolen" font on their website, they open themselves up to being sued by the font designer, their client etc. Besides, people already use fonts they don't have a license for to create bitmaps for their websites. There will always be people who pirate things, but there will also be people willing to pay a reasonable proportionate amount; a client simply won't understand why they can pay $100 to use a font in their printed literature, but it costs significantly more to do so online. "In the gaming world, _binary_ copies of a game typically start at $100 and only last at that price point for one year due to rampant illicit copying. How long do you think people would be willing to pay that price if the _source_ code were readily available?" Don't make me laugh! Seriously, I'm trying to eat here. 1: Game prices only last for a year because after a year nobody wants to buy it - they've completed it and traded it in for something newer and shinier, the one that their friends are all playing. 2: You're making my point for me! Exactly how many games would be bought if the game publishers insisted on selling their games with a royalty free license because they'll be copied by a section of their market? 3: Games employ DRM, but they still get pirated! It's always going to happen. Accept the piracy and make money off the people who would pay. 4: The big difference between games and fonts is that games are bought for entertainment by individuals who have nothing to lose by pirating, whereas fonts are bought to reinforce a corporate image, by an organisation that will be relatively easy to track down, name and shame, and take to court. I'm not saying that someone shouldn't be compensated for their work, far from it. I'm sure it does take years to create a quality font, but whereas games have a short shelf life, a quality font will be desirable for a very long time, and will continue to bring in an income for many years. The fact is that web technology isn't compatible with current commercial typography licensing and license pricing. Just because the fonts can't be protected from piracy isn't a reason to price yourself out of the market. All the time font foundries stick their heads in the sand and resist the needs of the common commercial web designer, they are giving away their new potential market to the free competition, which will eventually develop to the point where their quality is such that the existing market starts to switch; at that point the foundries have lost their edge and will be forced to compete on an equal footing. Across the industries you see people trying to hold on to their unsustainable business models, and resist the future instead of adopting to make the most of the new opportunities. It's simple evolution: adapt, or be overtaken by something that is better-suited to the environment.
The Real Anon
on Fuck the foundries
Here’s my half-baked suggestion for s way to licence fonts to individual web sites without requiring Mozilla Firefox to enforce DRM—which would be pointless since someone would immediately release a patch to drop the DRM support. - Font foundry supplies a digitally signed licence in (say) XML + XML Signature. It includes the web site’s base URL (or domain and path, like cookies do). - Pages using licenced fonts link to a copy of the licence file using the a LINK element with attribute REL=fontinfo - Foundries spider the web looking for references to their fonts in the same way image libraries do, and can check they are licensed using the links. Unlicensed usage can result in automatically generated C&D notices. - Honest web publishers can now pay to use custom fonts, and dishonest publishers run a risk of being sued. The point here is that no special new technology is needed by the person using the fonts in their web pages—an extra link in their template is a lot less bother than running Microsoft’s Windows-only EOT-generating tool or whatever, and is compatible with dynamically generated content, which EOT was not. No browser support is required, which is good because you could not get it. The extra work is done by the foundries, the only entities with a financial stake in enforcing the licences. As for whether I should pay £100 or £10000 to use a font on my personal web site is a matter for the market to decide.
A software developer walks into a bookstore and finds a book he wants. The book costs $100, which he thinks is an high price. He grumbles, but is still about to buy the book when he notices that it doesn't even come with a royalty-free eBook version the he can publish on his website. What does the software developer do? If you're Mark Pilgrim, you write on your website, "FUCK THE BOOKSTORES." After all, haven't bookstores realized that their business model is unsuccessful and that they should give Mark Pilgrim all of their books for free? @The Real Anon: "I can buy a license to use a font in a printed document for ~$100 which I can then show to as many people as I want, but as soon as I want to use it for exactly the same purpose online, that price (a) is not published on font foundry sites and (b) is going to be impossibly expensive to justify the payment." Asking for a license to a font for a printed document is the equivalent of distributing OEM copies of a binary program. Asking for a license to a font for an online document is the equivalent of distributing the source code of a binary program. You make an excellent point in (a) that the price is not published on font foundry sites. It's not published because the rights you want are royalty-free rights to fonts; those rights are typically sold for much, much more than most people are willing to pay. If a font foundry offered fonts for unlimited online usage for $100,000, would you pay it? Incidentally, for what it's worth, if you buy a license to a font you can use it to make a raster image online. Of course, that's not what you really want, is it? You don't make a good point in point (b). The fact is, there are people willing to pay large amounts of money for unlimited use of fonts. _You_ may not be able to justify the payment, but large publications can and do justify the payments in order to have a distinctive look and feel to their product. You may not agree with the justifications that large publications use. But at the end of the day they are willing to pay and you are not. "If you started selling reasonably-priced (ie $100) licenses for use on a website, people will start buying from you." Actually, I won't start selling licenses at all--I don't design fonts; I write software. "Reasonably-priced" is a subjective description. Should Microsoft start selling proprietary source code for $100 for whomever wants it? If they choose not to price their source code at that price, does that mean that Microsoft is unreasonable? (Some would say yes; hi RMS!) What if Microsoft chooses not to release source code at all, even though it is based on community work? (Microsoft is a strawman; feel free to substitute any large software company.) "You’re *totally* missing the point. We want to use your fonts. We want to give you money. Only you’re clutching onto your old business model grounded in the world of print, where nobody can afford to use your font. " No, I understand your point; repeated assertions don't mean that I don't understand. I think you are missing my point. Small ethical designers do purchase font licenses at low prices. Publications do purchase font licenses for unlimited use at high prices. You want to use the fonts, but, as I said earlier, you just don't want to pay for them. You can hem and haw about "clutching" onto an old business model, but the important point you seem to be missing is that it's not everyone that can't pay what people are asking, it's _you_. And rather than making any kind of reasonable counter-proposal, you and Mark and others persist in making ad-hominem attacks against foundries and independent type vendors. If I choose not to sell you my font for a price you are willing to pay, how does that justify telling me to "fuck off?" "Accept that the world moves on, embrace the new market that’s opening up in front of you, and make a fuckton of money." So in your model, a type designer who spends several years of work on a font will charge $100 for giving the source code to anyone who has a web browser and a credit card. The source code to the font--the font itself--is then freely available in the entire world by anyone who visits your website. Why would anyone else pay $100 for the same font rather than just taking it? In the gaming world, _binary_ copies of a game typically start at $100 and only last at that price point for one year due to rampant illicit copying. How long do you think people would be willing to pay that price if the _source_ code were readily available? I'm not objecting to online sales or trying to figure out a better way for typographers and other creative folks making money. The original post doesn't address this problem--it simply castigates people for charging much more than what Mark is willing to pay or attempting to limit the distribution of their fonts. "So you’re saying that Mark, and tens of thousands of web designers like him, can’t afford an unlimited royalty-free license for a font to use on their website, because it’s too expensive - and so he’s in the wrong? Of course he’s not - damned right it’s too expensive." How much should type designers charge? You say $100? I say if you can make a business model where fonts are sold for online usage for $100, then go for it. Find type designers who are willing to produce work-for-hire and hire them and then sell fonts for $100 a pop. Not willing to do the work? Can't find someone who will sell their work at that price? That's capitalism--you can't force people to sell a product at the price you want. Given that situation, I don't see how it is at all reasonable to then curse people who aren't willing to sell their work for your absurdly low prices. @Jeremy Dunk: "I love the drive-by commenters questioning Mark’s ethics, customer focus, and faith in free’s overlap with quality." I'm not sure if you are referring to me as a drive-by commentator. I don't feel I've questioned his ethics, focus, or the ability to have free quality products. However, his post castigated an entire industry of people for their unwillingness to essentially give away their work on his terms with nothing in return. In addition, he offered no real mechanism in which they could make a living if they acceded to his demands for giving away their product. So I certainly questioned his maturity, frugality, and business sense. And honestly, I think those are legitimate criticisms that I've backed up.
I love the drive-by commenters questioning Mark's ethics, customer focus, and faith in free's overlap with quality. "Epic fail", oh, sweet, sweet irony.
Jeremy Dunck
on Fuck the foundries
That should have been "Mark says he isn't willing..." obviously.
What I find amazing is that you are talking about making a design available to thousands, perhaps millions of viewers, so why shouldn’t you expect to pay a reasonable price I don't see where Mark says he is willing to pay a reasonable price for web fonts. I can buy a copy of, say, H&FJ's Gotham for $200, typeset a book with it and print and distribute "thousands, perhaps millions" of copies. Why can't I pay $200 or so and use that font on my web site?
@ JulesLt What are you on about? The software industry declining to engineer their products to protect artificial scarcity is not them swinging their dicks around; it's doing what engineering, common sense, and their customers demand. What other world should there or could there be? Anyway, the free fonts will only keep getting better. Lots of wonderful stuff in the world is free.
john
on Fuck the foundries
"Mark, do you actually care what people other than you think? If you think that ugly, latin-1 only fonts are good enough, consider that other people may not agree with you. You can blather all you want about the restrictions that foundries want to put on font distribution, but in the end that’s not what it’s about. You just don’t want to pay for the fonts." I coudn't agree more. It's called "the cost of doing business" and paying for something of value. There seems to be this perception in the graphic design and web design world, that high-quality content should be free, or almost free, and if it isn't...f-off. What I find amazing is that you are talking about making a design available to thousands, perhaps millions of viewers, so why shouldn't you expect to pay a reasonable price for a custom product that took months or years to develop? You seem to put your own role on a pedastal, but don't extend that view to others. What's that about? If you want free, go ahead and design with free fonts. Who cares. As a professional you should appreciate the artistic talent and process of creating custom fonts - not to mention the value you pass along to your customers. If you're not willing to ante-up for quality then you really couldn't care about your customers either. Go play with your toys. Sorry, you're an amateur. Epic fail.
Aaron
on Fuck the foundries
"Mark is complaining that “he can’t use” the fonts produced by other people because they won’t license them to him. And it’s not true: they will license the fonts to him, he just doesn’t want to pay what they are asking. Again, Mark is asking for an unlimited royalty-free licenses for fonts. He doesn’t want to put it that way, because you can put a price on that kind of license. It’s a cost he doesn’t want to pay." So you're saying that Mark, and tens of thousands of web designers like him, can't afford an unlimited royalty-free license for a font to use on their website, because it's too expensive - and so he's in the wrong? Of course he's not - damned right it's too expensive. I can buy a license to use a font in a printed document for ~$100 which I can then show to as many people as I want, but as soon as I want to use it for exactly the same purpose online, that price (a) is not published on font foundry sites and (b) is going to be impossibly expensive to justify the payment. You're *totally* missing the point. We want to use your fonts. We want to give you money. Only you're clutching onto your old business model grounded in the world of print, where nobody can afford to use your font. That will only have one effect: nobody will. And as the world of print continues to shrink, your income will continue to shrink. People who don't care about copyright will pirate your font anyway. People who do care about it will look for free alternatives, because that's the only practical option left to them. If you started selling reasonably-priced (ie $100) licenses for use on a website, people will start buying from you. If you see a website using your font, ask to see their license; if they can't show it, feel free to sue them until they bleed. Where's the problem here? Trying to get every browser implementation to adopt a DRM scheme is stupid, because just like every DRM scheme before it, it will fail for one simple reason; you're thinking about yourself, not the consumer. Accept that the world moves on, embrace the new market that's opening up in front of you, and make a fuckton of money.
The Real Anon
on Fuck the foundries
@AnonJerkWad: "It’s not his job to give you a business model or else he’d be running your business for you." Mark is complaining that "he can't use" the fonts produced by other people because they won't license them to him. And it's not true: they will license the fonts to him, he just doesn't want to pay what they are asking. Again, Mark is asking for an unlimited royalty-free licenses for fonts. He doesn't want to put it that way, because you can put a price on that kind of license. It's a cost he doesn't want to pay. Again, he can rant and rave about how terrible the foundries are acting, but it comes down to the fact that he is just plain angry that foundries and designers value their work more highly than he thinks they should. Generally, in business, if one party thinks a price is too high, it's up to the other party to make a counter-offer. Mark's not doing this right now: he is literally cursing at the foundries and walking away. He's not offering any kind of realistic option. I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask for his solution since he feels that foundries have an unreasonable business model. @abc: "This is exactly what is going wrong, the idea that designers and foundries have that releasing fonts on the web can only be done if they’re all 'free' (of price, I guess)." Interestingly, by law in the United States, I can make a printout of a font family, blow it up, trace it, create a new implementation, and sell it myself. This is totally legal--the design of the font cannot be copyrighted, only the actual implementation. Font designers know this all too well--the fact is, the only way they make money is by not releasing their "source code." Once they release their source to someone else, there is no way for them to prevent a third party from making a new copy of the font. And that third party doesn't even need to make a black box implementation, like in the software world. I'm sure there would be more type designers creating open and free fonts if you could figure out a way to compensate the designers fairly. I wasn't joking about having Google hire a team of designers to create fonts. How do you think Microsoft created their suite of web fonts? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web Microsoft did not release them royalty-free and eventually pulled them due to too many people using them without a license.
@Anon (and others like him). This is exactly what is going wrong, the idea that designers and foundries have that releasing fonts on the web can only be done if they're all "free" (of price, I guess). Unless someone implements some sort of magical solution that makes sure you get a dollar every time someone reads something in your font. The point of the article(AIUI, but apparently people seem to differ wildly on it) is that we will never give you that kind of power over our systems, so find another solution. In the meantime, just selling web licenses and going after infringers with lawyers is probably the best substitute. Especially the guy that found his font files illegally copied on some client's computers. Turn around and sue the living daylights out of them. How spineless can you get?
abc
on Fuck the foundries
Hey, Andy Rutledge made a post at uxmag.com with a similar attitude (http://www.uxmag.com/design/77/hungy-want-another-bullshit-sandwich). Read up on how that worked out for him. By the way, Gill Sans looks like shit on this site, and I'm on a Mac.
Argle
on Fuck the foundries
"Incidentally, Mark, feel free to chime in. You are obviously an expert in typography and business, so let us know how font designers should be making a living." It's not his job to give you a business model or else he'd be running your business for you. If anyone has been paying attention these last 10 years to the evolution of the Internet you'd notice that in a choice between Great vs Crappy the Crappy solution will win if the Crappy solution is cheaper, easier and less restrictive. But keep crying... maybe a glassful of those sweet tears will help you swallow the truth.
AnonJerkWad
on Fuck the foundries
@Zeitgeist: Actually, I'm also a software engineer, not a type designer. Interesting that you would make your assumptions. If marginal and reproduction costs are zero, how should people make money? Do you make money from providing support from your products? Do you think that would work for fonts or photos? Not all industries are the same.... Incidentally, Mark, feel free to chime in. You are obviously an expert in typography and business, so let us know how font designers should be making a living.
I develop open source software. I’ve spent years working on my projects. Let me understand smth, u mean u are working on years for projects with noone pay you? Im sorry but u cant understand that type design is a job, and im gonna let you down here, but really sorry when my daughter gonna ask new shoes, i won't look at her and say "sorry hun, i work for free now, go outside eat mud" how u expect people to live if they work for free? web designers work free? oO graphic designers work free oO? fashion designers work free oO? photographers work free oO? i wont analyze academic, this thread, said almost anything in that... not to mention that 90% of type designers are helping free through communities and projects on their free time. Its their work, its theie rules. Deal with it!!!
-type.nasos
on Fuck the foundries
He he... the poor capitalist bastards are sad that their sand castles are being swept away by a sea of social change. Sorry, but artificial scarcity will no longer be tolerated. I develop open source software. I've spent years working on my projects and I'm more than glad to make them available to every person on the planet. I use them to produce commercial products and so can you. Why are you artsy fartsy types so selfish? Are you really so poor? So desperate for attention?
I have "sinned" in the past and used fonts I didn't pay for. I was young and naive. I now regularly pay for fonts because it's the right thing to do. I wish more people in our profession would see the value in a well-designed typeface/font. I want to use non-standard fonts on the web. I would consider paying MORE for a font if I would be allowed to use it online. I would license font(s) on a per site basis, if need be. I would willingly provide foundries with URLs where their typefaces would be used. I accept responsibility for making sure the font file(s) were not easily accessible and/or downloadable. I'd like to think other web designers/developers would as well... Obviously there are people that will continue to pirate fonts, software, etc... But let's face it, that's not money the foundries - or software companies - are losing. Those people don't value that which they share/steal, and are unlikely to buy anyhow. It's a crazy idea, but if you empower your customer and maybe they'll buy more.
i'm totally with u. nevermind the h8rs (under the guise of constructive criticism) and the hear-no-evil squad. we're all adults here; if someone doesn't like ur guttermouth style, that someone(s) should click away. i'm over waiting on big business' and corporate bs holding everything i do/want to do up. and i'm sick of being "professional" about it. looking forward to watching the foundry dinosaurs go extinct, still clutching their "property" in their cold, dead hands. this is web. its purpose is to share.