Fonts bleg, copperplate edition

I'm in the process of learning bookmaking with InDesign because I'm gonna move into publishing, man. (I'm knocking the CT Chris Mooney book event into shape, then I'll do more ambitious things with some Valve events.) My question for you is: how do I tell whether I own a given font? Like most people I've gotten most of my fonts without noticing where or how. So probably they were acquired honestly. Once upon a time I bought this 100 font pack, but I couldn't tell you now what was in it. And bunches of free fonts downloaded. But in my wild youth I may have installed a thing or two, or - er, 100 - that don't belong to me. Example: I'm using a couple flavors of Copperplate in the CT book. How can I tell whether I own it? Does Copperplate come with Office or any Adobe product? How does one check?

Comments

[Evan]

Copperplate wasn't a random download on your part, it ships with your Mac. You can view the copyright and trademark info on any font by opening Font Book, selecting the font in question, and doing a command-i.

[jholbo]

Thanks Evan. I knew about the command-i thing, but presumably the same information would show no matter how the thing got on my computer.

I heard from a friend about someone using fonts in some publishing something or other and actually getting caught by Linotype, or whoever the owner was. How could Linotype possibly know? It seems rather mysterious how enforcement is handled in these areas. (I doubt that there is much enforcement. It's probably like music downloading, so it's not like I'm actually too worried or anything, but it seems best to be in the clear when you are actually contemplating something like professional publishing.) I guess that professional publishers handle it by shelling out thousands for the whole banana font pack. And then they know absolutely everything is cleared. But what if you pick up the things piecemeal and in rather odd ways?

[julia]

They're really serious about this. At work, we're not even allowed to outline fonts we don't own and use the vector art. The fines can come to thousands.

You really might want to consider buying something you're using professionally.

[David Moles]

I think you might have gotten Copperplate with MS Office — I’m sure there’s a list of what ships with Office (or did ship, with whatever version) around somewhere, but I wasn’t able to find it in a quick Google. If you stick to those you should be safe, if not necessarily interesting. :)

Or there’s the stuff that ships with the Adobe suite. Don’t know what version you’re using, but there’s a list for CS2 here. There’s several real classics there, and enough variety there to do pretty much anything. (I think the list for the original CS is pretty much the same, but it should be around somewhere. Oh, and as far as I can tell the academic version ships with the same set.)

You also ought to be safe with the PostScript standard 35, only everybody’s bored with those.

For the last book I edited, I went out and bought a couple of new fonts (Dante Std and ITC Johnston), but I’m a bit nuts about font novelty. (For the book before that I used Adobe Caslon Pro — ships with CS — not only because it kicks ass, but because I was basing the layout on some pre-WW2 sources and Caslon’s a classic.)

[jholbo]

That's very interesting Julia. I didn't know that. I was intending to be rather scrupulous about it, but sort of out of a combination of honor and paranoia. (I don't like to worry about long-shot lawsuits. And I'm not under any illusions that font designers make most of their money giving live font concerts. Selling 'this is not a garamond t-shirt' t-shirts. That sort of thing.) But I'm still confused about how the licensing regime is enforced in practice. I'm sure there are sophisticated bots for detecting the use of fonts. But how do they know who owns the thing?

[jholbo]

Thanks, Dave. I'm using a lot of garamond, as I've joked. It's partially because when I got InDesign 2 I got a 'free gift' and I clicked the garamond font set, which proved to be fantastically extensive. So I know I can stick with that. But it's a perfect illustration of my puzzle. How do I document that I got this 'free gift' and didn't just nick the stuff from a friend? I guess maybe there's a record somewhere, but I dunno where. I could ask Adobe, of course. Presumably they keep records of what people do when they register. But it all seems sort of weird. What's the scenario? Some lawyer emails me out of the blue and says: you use a lot of garamond. I say: yes. He says: you own it? I say: yes. He says: prove it or I'll see you in court. What do I say? It doesn't sound very plausible, all around.

[Amardeep]

In music, they have a distinction between personally owning a CD and licensing a song for commercial use. It sounds like that's the question you're asking.

Judging from this, they have that with fonts too. But it sounds like other readers know this stuff better than me.

[Pokie]

Are you publishing electronically, or in print?

If you publish in print, there is almost no way for a font owner to know whether or not you bought a font that was widely licensed by them. They could only tell if you were using a knock off (and they are extremely good at discerning subtle differences). So if you stick to something that has shipped - at some point - in a legit font pack, or with a common suite or OS, you should be fine (even if, hypothetically, you can't remember if your copy of Photoshop was installed from a friend's disk).

Speaking as an attorney who did most of the font licensing in the US during the 90s, I would not worry too much about this, unless you distribute the font as part of an ebook. Linotype, yes, is aggressive about asserting their rights, but the odds of them finding and coming after a small, struggling publisher are small. (I bet there is more to that story than you heard - like it was a clone, or an unauthorized modification, or something like that, and they didn't want a low quality font out there destroying their brand). Still, if you wish to be safe/honorable and want a full set and/or unusual fonts, your best bet is to buy a font pack. There are many options available these days and the cost is low.

Also, if you are distributing the font electronically, make sure the license allows for it. That is where you could get into trouble.

[jholbo]

J&B blegs get results! OK, while I've got you on the line, Pokie (and I formally renounce any intention to construe anything you say as professional legal advice), but please give me some advice: the model would be high-quality PDF's, given away. And possibly paper versions of the same, available for sale (print on demand). So there is a commercial side of the operation (potentially), although we aren't in it for the money, maaaan. I take it that you are saying that there isn't a real problem distributing files that contain the fonts UNLESS the font software can be extracted from the files. So PDF is not a problem. Am I right? But I should probably still be fairly vigilant, not just because font designers have families to feed, too, and they deserve to get paid; but because in theory - however long-shot - I could get in trouble for publishing a book that used a font that, it turned out, I didn't pay for (but how the hell would they know? That was my initial puzzlement. How indeed?) I guess what they detect are cases of people modifying their stuff, without permission, or else distribution of the font software itself, without permission.

So the example, above, of people tracing fonts is in fact not an example of hyper-vigilance - i.e. they EVEN go after people who trace; but a case in point of what they are ESPECIALLY concerned about. Because the tracing might then get spread all over the place. They are concerned about uncontrolled font breeding. Is that right?

[Rich Puchalsky]

Most well-formed PDF files include a copy of the font, right? Otherwise, you have to either make a sort of picture of the page (which bulks up the file tremendously and means that people can't select text) or rely on the reader to have the font on their machine (which naturally does not always work).

I don't know whether the font could be extracted from the PDF file. But it is in there, in some sense, I think.

[jholbo]

That's a good question, Rich. I don't know. I assumed that the answer was: you wouldn't need to encode the font completely. I know, for example, that InDesign contains a special 'package' command that, basically, ensures that whoever you are sending your complete file to gets everything they need to deal with it - e.g. all the font files you use. There's a little warning that pops up: make sure this is legal. My InDesign book informs me that different companies have different rules. Adobe insists that you can only send the font if the person you are sending it to already has it. Which sounds sort of pointless, but I guess as a convenience permission makes sense. They are not obliged to go hunt up their own damn copy, wherever it may be. Other companies apparently expressly grant permission so long as the recipient ONLY uses the font to print your thing. Very arcane, if it ever came to a serious legal question. Anyway, the point would be: no one seems to put the 'convent to PDF' command in remotely the same category. Maybe it's just a case of: it would be so damn inconvenient to try to steal a font this way that you might as well pay the $20, or whatever.

[Adam Kotsko]

Font theft is a serious crime. I can't tell you how angry I was when I learned that Microsoft had stolen a font of my design, called "Times New Roman." At the time, it didn't seem worth litigating, but now I look back and realize that I would have been set for life.

[jholbo]

Oddly enough I've been listening to Camper Van Beethoven "New Roman Times" - see sidebar. It's quite good. But I haven't seen a penny of profit off it myself.

[dsquared]

oh god, first Healy now you. Is there something about Macs that turns everyone who buys one into a great big fruity font ponce?

[jholbo]

I would say that the two are locked in a dialectical relationship.

[Pokie]

John - Good, because I am no longer practicing! (I have children, and the youngest is about the same age as Zoe seems to be). Still, FWIW:

As Adam pointed out, font developers are very proprietary about their designs. Things that seem almost imperceptible to you and to me, are critical to them. So yes, you are right, they pay special attention to who is "stealing" whose fonts, and for example, tracing a font, converting it into vector art - presumably for the purpose of changing it to fit better into a graphic by changing the proportions (making it a bit thinner, or taller, or whatever), will cause umbrage - and possible litigation. You, presumably are not going to do that, so don't worry about this.

I don't see how they could tell if you licensed a font or not, if you use a standard, well-distributed font to print on paper. So again, stick to the normal fonts, with names you recognize (skip that interesting looking one from the Ukraine, for example) and you should be fine.

If your electronic distribution includes the font - especially if it is extractable - you need to be much more careful. (Actually, as I recall, font vendors were initially very suspicious of PDFs as a whole, not just for extraction reasons, but because of the compression and possible degradation of quality that could result if you weren't distributing the actual font. You just can't win...). You would need to read the font license to check if this is allowed. This pretty much means either: 1) you would need new fonts, since you can't check the license if you don't have it, or 2) using one that comes with your OS or a software program you purchased (the license is often installed on your computer in the application folder, or the company would no doubt be happy to email one to you if you don't have it).

What you want is a legitimate font, from a legitimate source. Good font designers take readability into account. Not only will it look better, but hopefully royalties will accrue to the artists who created it (although it doesn't always work that way). From a risk perspective, if you stick to widely licensed fonts in normal sizes and weights, like those bundled with the Mac or by MS, or Office, etc., your risk should be very low. Otherwise, check the license, which should be fairly self explanatory. If it isn't, email it to me and I'll help you decipher it.

Hope that helps!

[joe o]

Para said, ‘You know, I think you’re a Frutiger kind of guy.’ For a weird moment, I thought she somehow knew about my episode with Keith, but then she brought up some text in Frutiger, which is a font, sort of like Arial, strong and manly.

[David Moles]

Arial is neither strong nor manly.

[Bro. Bartleby]

This reminds me, at the monastery we have in the cellar an old Lintotype machines, it used to work, but the abbot halted our use of it, for the machine has a pot beside it that melts lead (and creates lead fumes), and the melting lead is injected into the mold which finally produces the line-o-type. Of course we have these rather large and heavy 'magazines' that hold the fonts (brass matrixes) and I recall we do have Copperplate in 12 point. Of course one needs a complete magazine of a font for each point size, so to have all the various point sizes, I'm afraid one would have a thousand pounds worth of font magazines! After reading about all this talk about modern electronic typography, I now have the itch to turn on the gas and flame up the lead pot and maybe set a few lines-o-type!