"The only thing the human there probably does is wait for the ad revenues to arrive and spend it."

And that, surely, constitutes commercial use of our fonts, since without our fonts, they'd generate zero ad revenue!

I've posted on a legal forum within the last hour - I've explained the fonts2u model and asked for a legal opinion as to whether I am entitled to a fee from them for their use of my fonts.

I'll keep you posted.

A quick follow-up to my post in the legal forum.

One reply from a media law attorney in the US is that another site's use of our fonts "could potentially be seen as a commercial use based on the ad revenue generated [and] corresponding loss of revenue..." I should add this is purely a personal opinion and not a definitive legal statement.

Not sure what to do with this information, but it's encouraging to have this opinion.

ETA: if it turns our their use IS regarded as commercial, then dafont is also entitled to compensation for lost revenues.

It seems the argument about whether or not other sites profit from our fonts might not matter. This is from a website called The UK Copyright Service (http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/) - specifically, from their 'Copyright Myths' page:


http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/copyright_myths

I think only the first of the two answers apply to your/our case. But that is nothing new, you/me/us have the copyright but it is difficult/very expensive to sue a Slowakian citizen outside Slowakia and/or Virgin Islands company outside the Virgin Islands. Much cheaper and faster would be to rent a .... (I understand that some are offended when I give the nationality of that Balkan nation). They operate simply and quick, they ring the doorbell and fire. Solved. They learned the method from rent a .... , once operational in Germany and the Netherlands.

I spoke with an IP solicitor here in the UK this morning. I set out the facts as I believe them to be and asked his opinion. His opinion (and, I stress, it is based solely on my account) is that I have a good chance of making a successful claim for copyright infringement and loss of earnings against any and all sites that redistribute our work. This also applies to every other font author here and also to dafont itself.

The problem, of course, is that my potential loss is too small to make any action worthwhile. The only way to bring a worthwhile action would be for the community to bring a group action, which is complicated by the fact that we'd need to coordinate our efforts and demonstrate that all plaintiffs were who they said they were prior to filing a suit.

Unless there's a willingness to do this, there doesn't appear to much else left to do.