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Funny, but fonts can’t be copyrighted.

They say the ad used XBand Rough, an “illegal clone”.

If you redraw an entire font, pixel for pixel, manually, it is not an illegal clone. This happens all the time. The creators of the ad just used a copy that was free.

So ironic, yes, illegal, no.

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Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

pixel for pixel

I don’t think it was a bitmap font.

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- fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  If you copy a font, bitmap or not, you’re doing it as a pixel map on a pixelated monitor.
  
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  - dukk@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    most fonts nowadays are vector based, so they aren’t really created with pixels :)
    
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    fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Vector is still pixel maps. Open an SVG in a text editor 😉
    
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SoulWager@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Typefaces cannot be protected by copyright in the US, but by some stupid interpretation, fonts are software, which is protected. Really annoying how tech-illiterate judges can screw up something this obvious. Even if the technical implementation of a font was something that should be protected, it should be under patent law, not copyright.

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- fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Yea, and in this instance, they were using a free font.
  
  Personally I think the artistry in the typeface itself is what should be protected.
  
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- jerkface@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  There’s no rational reason typefaces shouldn’t enjoy protection.
  
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  - SoulWager@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    In general, not interfering is the default position, there needs to be a reason it should enjoy protection.
    
    Need to look at the goals the legislators were pursuing when they wrote the law. If protecting typefaces hinders the production of new books, that goes against the intent of the law. It might not make a difference on that front NOW, but back when typesetting was done by hand, and you needed a whole set of physical type for each typeface, it was a bigger deal.
    
    The point of copyright is to encourage creativity, and there are reasons you might not care about encouraging creativity in typefaces. It’s a bit like trying to copyright how you pronounce a word, getting TOO creative here makes it more difficult to convey meaning, and people will do it anyway without the protection of copyright, it’s just a natural consequence of how language develops.
    
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