Legality of using fonts as images

[theducks]

Hitch (and others)
Out of all the e-books sold, How many of those that were bought by users who even KNEW there were fonts embedded, let alone how to extract them?
Maybe 1/4 of the MR members?
How many of those sold, don't even know about MR?

My gripe with the foundry's, is cost to use in a e-book.
Now compare that with Windows (which includes many font faces)? Their per/font price is outrageous. (The entire Face, is absurdly priced)

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by theducks

Hitch (and others)
Out of all the e-books sold, How many of those that were bought by users who even KNEW there were fonts embedded, let alone how to extract them?
Maybe 1/4 of the MR members?

Ducks? I don't think you're understanding my point. It doesn't matter how many. What matters is that it could be done. And if one guy does it, he can then put the font up, on any number of those illicit font-sharing sites and all that. It doesn't matter if you "give" a copy of a font you've licensed to one person or 100 people; you're still transferring a piece of software to someone else sans license. Right? And that one person you innocently gave it to might turn around and give it to those 100 or 1000 more, no?

How many of those sold, don't even know about MR?

Knowing about MR is hardly a prerequisite to copyright infringement or stealing software, is it, Ducky? I'm not quite following your legal segue here.

My gripe with the foundry's, is cost to use in a e-book.
Now compare that with Windows (which includes many font faces)? Their per/font price is outrageous. (The entire Face, is absurdly priced)

Which "entire Face" is absurdly priced? You mentioned Windows, which owns myriad fonts (as does Apple), but not the font or face to which you refer.

In terms of the foundries, of course they charge a lot for embedding, It has significant risk for them, as discussed in my last few posts. When a font is embedded into an eBook, the likelihood that the font will be misappropriated by some third party is significantly higher than when it's not. Naturally, as when it's not embedded, there's zero risk. When it is embedded, the risk is arithmetically greater. By definition, having moved up from zero to "something."

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Even obfuscating isn't a deterrent. I can easy remove the obfuscating form a font. The only deterrent is to subset.

I've seen Adobe Garamond Pro embedded too many times. It's a terrible font for eInk.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Even obfuscating isn't a deterrent. I can easy remove the obfuscating form a font. The only deterrent is to subset.

I've seen Adobe Garamond Pro embedded too many times. It's a terrible font for eInk.

Agreed. Subsetting is the ONLY way. Obfuscation won't stop someone who wants the font file--subsetting does.

Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Agreed. Subsetting is the ONLY way. Obfuscation won't stop someone who wants the font file--subsetting does.

Hitch

Have you seen eBooks from Penguin recently? They embed some fonts just for a single screen advert when they could have used a full screen graphic for the advert instead. It makes the eBooks bloated with crapware.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Have you seen eBooks from Penguin recently? They embed some fonts just for a single screen advert when they could have used a full screen graphic for the advert instead. It makes the eBooks bloated with crapware.

Yuck... that reminds me when I read Steven King's 11/22/63.

34 embedded fontfaces, so many were meaningless.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Yuck... that reminds me when I read Steven King's 11/22/63.

34 embedded fontfaces, so many were meaningless.

I have read 11/22/63. I know why that was done. It was done to simulate the way it was done in the pBook. The thing is, 34 complete fonts were embedded. S&S should have subset all of those fonts. That would have saved a lot of space.

But the way Penguin does it is 100% useless. It's just an advert.

I've taken to removing most embedded fonts and using sans-serif where a sans-serif font was embedded. If I do decide to keep any of the fonts embedded, I will subset. Most fonts are not actually needed. There are times when some extended characters are used and yes, it better to make sure they are available. But why do some eBooks have a span around these characters? That's just silly.

Most of the time, I convert these ePub 2 in ePub 3 clothing back to ePub 2 because I don't like the excess span this and span that with epub:type all over the place. It would be a lot better to have this sort of thing once in the header of the HTML file and be done with it. Role, epub:type, figure, section and other stuff that's actually not needed is what I get rid of. If I could put a section code into the header that tells what role the HTML file plays in the ePub, that would be OK.

But as for fonts, it seems most embedded fonts are not tested with an eInk screen as they are too light. For example, Adobe Garamond Pro is used sometimes and it's way too light. Use the semi-bold versions for normal and italics and extra bold for bold and bold-italics. Then it would be OK.

I cannot see anyone getting in trouble for using a graphic image that contains someones copywritten fonts that were not paid for. But you never know what could happen. So the thing to do is try to find a font that's similar enough that's free.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I have read 11/22/63. I know why that was done. It was done to simulate the way it was done in the pBook. The thing is, 34 complete fonts were embedded. S&S should have subset all of those fonts. That would have saved a lot of space.

The version I had they were subset (~44KBs each). Not as bad as it could've been, but still extra bloat.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But the way Penguin does it is 100% useless. It's just an advert.

Yes, a font just for advertisements... that's definitely overboard (and then when they forget to subset...).

Similarly, I've run across books with embedded fonts for those preview chapters of other/next books.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There are times when some extended characters are used and yes, it better to make sure they are available. But why do some eBooks have a span around these characters? That's just silly.

I think it might be a leftover from conversion, or the tool treating accented characters as a "foreign" character.

Example, let's say in the original source document (DOCX, InDesign, etc. etc.):

I went to the caf<span lang="fr">é</span>.

On the print-book surface, it looks "normal"... but when exported to ebook, let's say their workflow strips lang:

I went to the caf<span>é</span>.

And lots of times it occurs from copying/pasting from other sources, etc. Like a designer might copy/paste HTML from a site into InDesign, and all this other cruft gets carried over. They wipe it and reformat it in InDesign, but some of the hidden junk is still there.

I was scratching my head over a similar "bug" for years. One of the clients I work for exports from InDesign, and every so often I would just get very strange "Arabic-Indic Numbers":

InDesign EPUB Export:

For more information, see Book title (١٩٣٢, Publisher), p. 123.

Actual Correct:

For more information, see Book title (1932, Publisher), p. 123.

You couldn't search the InDesign file for the string "١٩٣٢", such characters didn't exist!

Turns out, wherever they copied/pasted from occasionally had random teeny sections of text marked as lang="ar-SA".

So in PDF, it exports and looks fine.
In the PDF tags, it exports and looks fine (English).
In other formats, it exports and looks fine...
In EPUB, InDesign automatically converted the 1932 into indic characters, because it thought it was written in Arabic.

I think some of this might also get introduced when the main OS/program language is different from the book language. Let's say you send yours over to a French typesetter who has their InDesign set to French. Well, some of that crap might sneak in, even if they try their best to change everything to English. (I recently saw this with a Homeschooling book I read for book club...)

Sometimes you run spellcheck, make a few corrections, and in the backend, the program "helpfully" adds lang information to that specific word.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Role, epub:type, figure, section and other stuff that's actually not needed is what I get rid of.

That stuff's more helpful for Accessibility.