Mark D Lew wrote:
Regarding copyrights on fonts, the current guiding case is Adobe vs
SSI (1998), which you can read online at
<http://directory.serifmagazine.com/Ethics_and_Law/Copyright/
judgement.php4>.
The law is pretty straightforward, neither illogical nor
complicated. When you load a "font" on your system, what you are
loading is not the typeface per se, but a small bit of specialized
software that tells the computer how to draw all the characters
within that typeface.
and indeed, I am familiar with Adobe v. SSI; I would assert that the
U.S. Supreme Court decision is illogical and complicated for this
reason. The court held that SSI infringed software copyrights because
the files manipulated by SSI were "small bit[s] of specialized
software". But as I understand the court's opinion, if instead of
applying mathematical algorithms in manipulating the digital files in
the way that SSI did, I made a large (3600 point) hardcopy printout of
the font character, and used that image to create a high density bitmap
image, which I imported to a graphics editor, and manipulated the image
according to the same general procedures employed by SSI, subsequently
import the modified image into a font editor, the insertion of an analog
step into the process removes any possibility of infringement, since
there was point at which the "specialized bit of software" was
inconsequential. So, comparing the result of the process with the
added analog step, with the result obtained by SSI, it is doubtful that
an expert in typography could identify the differences between fonts
created with the two methods, yet applying the court's opinion, while
the SSI fonts infringed, the identical ones created with an analog step
in the process do not. To have two identical results, in which one is
infringing, and the other not, is illogical and complicated.
ns
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
