Legal status of ebedded fonts in ebooks?

jackm8 · Yesterday, 12:30 PM

As far as I know, publishers, and/or authors of ebooks need to license the fonts, or use open source fonts. What about end users? All the fonts included in ebooks are regular font files that can be used as fonts in other programs and readers.

salamanderjuice · Yesterday, 12:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jackm8

As far as I know, publishers, and/or authors of ebooks need to license the fonts, or use open source fonts. What about end users? All the fonts included in ebooks are regular font files that can be used as fonts in other programs and readers.

I wouldn't use an unlicensed font for commercial/business/public purposes. I'd imagine it's probably not that big a deal to use a font to read a book it wasn't licensed for, for your personal use only.

KevinH · Yesterday, 01:09 PM

And most embedded fonts in ebook that are not open source, have been either subsetted (to both shrink size and make them not useful as a regular font) or have been obfuscated by one of two possible font obfuscation algorithms.

In both cases, outside of the epub they are embedded in they are not useful.

Quoth · Today, 10:09 AM

Font embedded in an ebook
Unless it's an open source font, or licensed free for personal use it's copyright violation to use it for any other ebook even on the same ereader, even for personal use. But they would have to sue you.

So in practice you can do what you like as as long as you don't upload or give a copy to someone with the unlicensed font copy.

Just like the rest of the content of the ebook actually. This is not complicated.

The Snag!
Even most fonts that are open source (or licensed for free personal use) are typically sub-setted. This saves a lot of space for headings and such. Some regular body fonts are huge, so sub-setting them is common.

So madness even to consider reusing a font from an ebook even if you think it's free, or it's only for personal use. Go and download a font. There are even genuinely free ones similar to some nice expensive ones, so don't download from dodgy sites.

Any font on your PC (Linux, Mac, Windows) can probably be used for personal ebook use, but don't assume (even on Linux) that they can be used for publishing (free or commercial makes no difference). Publishing means distributing copies – nothing to do with if the copies are free or sold.

Yesterday, 12:30 PM	#1
jackm8 Addict Posts: 332 Karma: 3000000 Join Date: Nov 2015 Device: none	Legal status of ebedded fonts in ebooks? As far as I know, publishers, and/or authors of ebooks need to license the fonts, or use open source fonts. What about end users? All the fonts included in ebooks are regular font files that can be used as fonts in other programs and readers.

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Yesterday, 01:09 PM	#3
KevinH Sigil Developer Posts: 8,761 Karma: 5706256 Join Date: Nov 2009 Device: many	And most embedded fonts in ebook that are not open source, have been either subsetted (to both shrink size and make them not useful as a regular font) or have been obfuscated by one of two possible font obfuscation algorithms. In both cases, outside of the epub they are embedded in they are not useful.

Today, 10:09 AM	#4
Quoth Still reading Posts: 14,023 Karma: 105092227 Join Date: Jun 2017 Location: Ireland Device: All 4 Kinds: epub eink, Kindle, android eink, NxtPaper	Font embedded in an ebook Unless it's an open source font, or licensed free for personal use it's copyright violation to use it for any other ebook even on the same ereader, even for personal use. But they would have to sue you. So in practice you can do what you like as as long as you don't upload or give a copy to someone with the unlicensed font copy. Just like the rest of the content of the ebook actually. This is not complicated. The Snag! Even most fonts that are open source (or licensed for free personal use) are typically sub-setted. This saves a lot of space for headings and such. Some regular body fonts are huge, so sub-setting them is common. So madness even to consider reusing a font from an ebook even if you think it's free, or it's only for personal use. Go and download a font. There are even genuinely free ones similar to some nice expensive ones, so don't download from dodgy sites. Any font on your PC (Linux, Mac, Windows) can probably be used for personal ebook use, but don't assume (even on Linux) that they can be used for publishing (free or commercial makes no difference). Publishing means distributing copies – nothing to do with if the copies are free or sold.

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