MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Source of fonts for embedding in free ePubs

bobcdy · 03-04-2010, 03:09 PM

Frabjous,
Thanks for the info about the sites I mentioned and about fontsquirrel. Many years ago I purchased the Southern Software, Inc. cd

"Southern Software, Inc. gives you the BEST font package on the planet! The price is only $29.95 (plus shipping and handling) for "Just My Type" - 3320 professional quality fonts on one CD."

and often have wondered about the legality of using these fonts. When I purchased them, the company's copyrights had not been disputed, and I had learned about the company in a Wall Street Journal article about it. I never did use them, but now with embedded fonts in epub I have started thinking about it again. I did a web search about this but never found any definite answer (the only one that seemed sort of pertinent was the one you listed, but there was no conclusion about legality). There are a number of sites discussing SSI copyright problems, but nothing about current use of the out-of-business's fonts. SSI fonts are now widely available individually on the internet and are used in various places, but there's still questions in my mind about using them for ebooks. The advantage to using them is that there are a lot of these fonts available, many look pretty good although sometimes kerning is not so good, and of course anyone with an inexpensive font-making program like Font-Creator can take an SSI font (or any other font) and obscure its origin. Also, when used in an epub and opened in Sigil, the font name is replaced by 'font001.ttf, font002.ttf... I actually used an internet distributed SSI font in two of my recent epubs, and wondered whether it's legal to continue with this practice.

Bob

03-04-2010, 03:09 PM	#35
bobcdy Fanatic Posts: 527 Karma: 1048576 Join Date: May 2009 Device: bebook; prs-950; nook simple touch; HTC Jetstream tablet	Frabjous, Thanks for the info about the sites I mentioned and about fontsquirrel. Many years ago I purchased the Southern Software, Inc. cd "Southern Software, Inc. gives you the BEST font package on the planet! The price is only $29.95 (plus shipping and handling) for "Just My Type" - 3320 professional quality fonts on one CD." and often have wondered about the legality of using these fonts. When I purchased them, the company's copyrights had not been disputed, and I had learned about the company in a Wall Street Journal article about it. I never did use them, but now with embedded fonts in epub I have started thinking about it again. I did a web search about this but never found any definite answer (the only one that seemed sort of pertinent was the one you listed, but there was no conclusion about legality). There are a number of sites discussing SSI copyright problems, but nothing about current use of the out-of-business's fonts. SSI fonts are now widely available individually on the internet and are used in various places, but there's still questions in my mind about using them for ebooks. The advantage to using them is that there are a lot of these fonts available, many look pretty good although sometimes kerning is not so good, and of course anyone with an inexpensive font-making program like Font-Creator can take an SSI font (or any other font) and obscure its origin. Also, when used in an epub and opened in Sigil, the font name is replaced by 'font001.ttf, font002.ttf... I actually used an internet distributed SSI font in two of my recent epubs, and wondered whether it's legal to continue with this practice. Bob Last edited by bobcdy; 03-04-2010 at 03:12 PM.