MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - You Wouldn’t Think It, But Typeface Piracy Is a Big Problem

Jessica Lares · 11-01-2015, 01:22 AM

I didn't like that article - In the beginning, it focuses on plagiarizing, and on the second half pirating, and they don't really go hand in hand.

And I really don't think font piracy is a problem. The bigger issue at large is that people think that they shouldn't have to invest any money into their work, or include licensing in a project's cost.

We, as readers/watchers/etc, have no idea whether or not a font was licensed correctly.

I'm not going to say that pirating fonts is OK, but you know, if a font happens to be on your computer, there's nothing stopping people from loading it on another device. Baskerville is a preinstalled font that comes in OS X for example. Garamond gets installed with other software too, including Microsoft Office and Adobe's suite.

Selling fonts is based on supply and demand. You can sell a kooky heading type for ~$20 on places like Creative Market, but especially when you have to put more work into it, and use higher end software to author them, it makes more sense to charge the $100+ for licenses.

11-01-2015, 01:22 AM	#7
Jessica Lares Wizard Posts: 2,240 Karma: 5759170 Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Near Dallas, Texas, USA Device: iPad Mini, iPod Touch (5th gen)	I didn't like that article - In the beginning, it focuses on plagiarizing, and on the second half pirating, and they don't really go hand in hand. And I really don't think font piracy is a problem. The bigger issue at large is that people think that they shouldn't have to invest any money into their work, or include licensing in a project's cost. We, as readers/watchers/etc, have no idea whether or not a font was licensed correctly. I'm not going to say that pirating fonts is OK, but you know, if a font happens to be on your computer, there's nothing stopping people from loading it on another device. Baskerville is a preinstalled font that comes in OS X for example. Garamond gets installed with other software too, including Microsoft Office and Adobe's suite. Selling fonts is based on supply and demand. You can sell a kooky heading type for ~$20 on places like Creative Market, but especially when you have to put more work into it, and use higher end software to author them, it makes more sense to charge the $100+ for licenses. Last edited by Jessica Lares; 11-01-2015 at 02:40 AM. Reason: I repeated myself, heh.