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Flash font movie sharing...legal issues?
sIFR is pretty darn cool. However, not everybody who would like to employ sIFR once in a while has (or wants to buy) the latest Flash application just for the occasional sIFR employment (sIFR 3 requires Flash 7 or later). So I was wondering what kind of legal issues might be involved, if any, with sharing font movies; i.e., someone who has Flash 7 (or newer) who makes a given font movie for use with sIFR, and then shares those movies to people who couldn’t make them otherwise.
I certainly understand it being a breach of copyright if a person was to pass the actual font files themselves to install on someone elses machine (bad), but what about just a Flash movie where the font is useless except in conjuction with sIFR?
Seems to me this would be a cool opportunity/niche for a Website having the objective of archiving/sharing Flash font movies for SiFR, assuming there were no legal problems.
Anyone have a firm grasp of the law in this area?
Last edited by Destry (2006-06-24 14:28:33)
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#2 2006-06-24 18:45:47
- NyteOwl
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- From: Nova Scotia, Canada
- Registered: 2005-09-24
- Posts: 539
Re: Flash font movie sharing...legal issues?
I would think it would be ok – otherwise every company a flash enabled website is designed for needs to own flash and the fonts … to say nothing of all the free flash templates floating around.
Ianal but afaik you only get into copyright problems when you distribute the actual font files.
If it’s just text couldn’t you use Swish rather than Adobe’s Flash ? (note:Ii have never used it just aware of it so if it’s a dumb question my apologies) :)
Obsolescence is just a lack of imagination. / 36-bits Forever! / #include <disclaimer.h>;
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Re: Flash font movie sharing...legal issues?
No, that’s not true. Technically you don’t own the font, you buy a licence to use the font data. Giving away the font data depends on the licence (i.e. its possible with free font). Passing on commercial fonts in a way that enables other people to use it without buying the font is doing them out of business and clearly violates the purchase contract. It’s a little like passing on software but saying you zipped it up first, so it’s not the original file.
The same goes for flash-enabled sites or even fonts as images. If they are using a commercial font, then the party responsible for sourcing the site or image (either the company or the agency/designer or both) has to own the font. If photoshop or flash templates includes ways in which commercial fonts can be used for other purposes, then they are probably breaking the law (or from countries where this is not regarded as breaking the law). If the font is rendered as an pixel image or turned into an outline for a photo, then it no longer works as a font and becomes a piece of artwork – that is ok for the copyright owner to distribute further.
I know it sounds attractive, but abusing this could well have repercussions, such as locking down siFR altogether, particularly considering Adobe now owns Flash and is a major font vendor.
An example: At present some font vendors (particularly the very good but small typographers) have an extra licence if you wish to include their fonts in downloadable PDFs. You have to purchase this over and above the licence to use the font on your system. This is because some hackers have managed to extract the font data out of PDFs and re-use the font. The vendors have devised this ‘extra licence’ to cover their potential losses.
It’s not really necessary as newer PDF versions include mechanism for make it more difficult to extract fonts, and embedding only the actual characters used of a font, but no-one is forced to use them and enough old versions of acrobat still abound. The upshot for the normal user: it makes buying font licences even more expensive than it already is.
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Re: Flash font movie sharing...legal issues?
I know for images a license can allow you to use the image on your site or on a clients site but not allow you to distribute it as part of web templates for example.
I wonder if something similar could apply to font files. Although granted you aren’t actually distributing the font itself.
The requirement of needing a copy of Flash is the one thing I don’t like about sFIR. Since I really try to stay away from flash as much as possible.
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Re: Flash font movie sharing...legal issues?
hakjoon wrote:
The requirement of needing a copy of Flash is the one thing I don’t like about sFIR. Since I really try to stay away from flash as much as possible.
Exactly. This is the position I’m in. I have the first version of Flash MX (2002, Flash 6). I’ve barely ever used it, and don’t foresee doing so anytime soon, except for sIFR, but now with sIFR 3 I can’t even do that.
Having said that, Mark Wubben hinted to the fact that there are some workarounds via open-source tools, but I haven’t gone there yet.
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