Hello all! I'm a graphic artist to be and I was hoping to find out as much as possible on the subject of Copyrights in the context of graphic design (excluding photography, I leave that for later) both generally and also more specifically about Fonts. I was hoping someone could provide a good source/website, the more official and the clearer it is, the better

-->> Regarding EU laws <<--
Additionally I also have a specific question regarding fonts. Inspiring oneself of other fonts is of course permissible and unavoidable. The question is, how far can we go before infringing on copyrights? Say there's a really nice font I'd like to use but can't find the 150€ I would need to do so. As designer surely I can then just make a font of my own based on the first one, but to what extent? If I vectorize a letter and move say, 3-4 points around, I end up with a new shape (assuming I've moved them more than just a pixel or two but not that much that it looks obviously different), but where are the (clear) lines not to cross? (avoiding any "grey area" as much as possible). Because I often see two almost identical fonts from different designers, and for example one is the "same" as the other only with added "serifs". And to me I find it normal, I don't find myself thinking its a ripoff in anyway.
Thanks a lot for the help!
Ahoy! I've found a font that I really like but its not for free. I was thus wondering if anyone could pinpoint me to any other font that I could use instead which looked the most alike. The font in the screenshot is the Space (family) font -
http://www.linotype.com/1086311/Space-family.html - Obviously googling "space font" almost only yields font from the "space" category :p I was especially looking for something which kept the same "K"; "R"; "O"; "M" and "N".
Cheers!
Ian

Edited 2 times. Last edit on Dec 04, 2012 at 16:21 by drf_
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