Comment by NoMoreNicksLeft
20 hours ago
> was itself arguably a copyright-infringing knock-off.
In US law, there is no such thing. The shape of a glyph (or many) isn't even slightly copyrightable. This is settled law. Fonts (on computers) have a special status that makes them semi-copyrightable in that some jackass judge from the 1980s called them "computer programs" and so they have the same protection as software... but this won't protect against knockoffs.
They are computer programs. Not sure why you’d crudely insult the judge for saying that.
Are fonts really programs? Is a digital image file also a program?
A font file is more like a config that’s used by your OS to render something, there’s no real interactivity in fonts (except some ligatures but those are just static tables, right?).
TrueType, which has been around since the 80s, includes a full Turing-complete instruction set for hinting: https://developer.apple.com/fonts/TrueType-Reference-Manual/...
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Fonts aren't just programs, they can contain and run an entire AI model to give you access to an LLM in any program running Harfbuzz: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40766791
I would say that counts as interactivity.
Yes. And they're also copyrightable.
That's why this shit is so stupid.
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Well they're programs tbf
Is this fair? It actually takes a lot of work (I assume) to design letter's shapes. Of course, not counting those who just trace 16-th century font without paying a compensation.
Who are you paying for a 400-year old font? Who deserves to get paid for a 400-year old font?
> Of course, not counting those who just trace 16-th century font without paying a compensation
I can't tell which way you mean this, but that sounds similar to the situation with most public domain musical compositions - the manuscripts may be completely open but a specific typesetting can still under copyright. And like that case, "just" tracing a font / typesetting a composition is still a fair amount of work.
> takes a lot of work
The "sweat of the brow" argument is not valid in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
>Under the Feist ruling in the US, mere collections of facts are considered unoriginal and thus not protected by copyright, no matter how much work went into collating them.
This person isn't just collecting existing letter shapes; inventing a new letter shapes would be protected by copyright?
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