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fonts2u.com is removing original readme files!

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02/02/2015 à 21:14

The download page fonts2u is offering the fonts uploaded at dafont.com by removing the original readme files. These are simply substituted by installation instructions and a note, that the font has been provided by fonts2u. This evening I wrote them to remove my fonts from their page and I'm waiting for reaction. Does anyone know since when they are doing this?

Édité le 02/02/2015 à 22:56 par koeiekat


04/02/2015 à 02:40

I did that before but nothing came out of it. Perhaps someone has a better and effective way to get your message through.

I even tried to "bad mouth" them in the font itself and they do not seem to mind displaying it on their site.


04/02/2015 à 03:52

methon, keep in mind that you have created a font that can be freely downloaded on the Internet. While you may have uploaded it exclusively to DaFont, and perhaps expressed an intent that the font not be redistributed by other sites, legally, that's only a request, but not a legal right, on your part. You don't want someone to do something, and you ask them not to, but they have no legal obligation to obey you.

Here's a good example: A sign on the side of a building states: "No smoking within five meters of this wall". Within five meters of the wall, there is a public sidewalk.

The directive on the sign is relevant to anyone who lives or works within the building, as they are obliged to obey instructions of their landlord or their employer, as a term of their tenancy or their employment contract. The directive is not binding, however, to a civilian walking on the sidewalk, (It is assumed that the hypothetical example does not take place in Singapore, Saudi Arabia, or another country where littering and/or public tobacco consumption are serious infractions).

If a punk rocker was smoking, while walking on the sidewalk in front of the building, but not loitering in one place, then if an official representative of the building told him he couldn't smoke there, the punk rocker could say, "Fuck off, asshole.", and continue on his way. Just because the building doesn't want people to smoke less than 5 meters from the wall, doesn't mean that other people need to comply, because the building doesn't own the sidewalk in front of it.

A prohibition of that sort can be enforced only on private property. It is possible for someone to be arrested merely for occupying public property, but only if they remain within one place, as if a beggar set up camp in front of the building, or if street prostitutes plied their trade in front of the building. If the building owned all the land within five meters of the wall, the directive would be legally enforceable on the average citizen.

In your case, when creating the font file, you have an obligation to include the terms of commercial use within the .ttf or .otf copyright and licensing fields. Including that information in a read me document, or a Note of the Author on DaFont, isn't enough. The commercial use fee relates to using the .ttf or .otf file. If someone uses the font commercially, without meeting the terms of commercial use, based on law, a Judge should rule in your favour, if the commercial use terms were included in the .ttf file, but the same Judge would rule against you, if they were not.

You could not sue fonts2U, because they have not used your font commercially. They've offered it as a free download. You could sue someone who used the font for commercial purposes, without abiding by the terms of the licensing. Where that person got the free font is irrelevant. Just because you write a note at DaFont, stating the terms of use, doesn't mean anyone is obliged to read it.

If the terms of commercial use are set out in the copyright and licensing internal fields, however, that sufficiently establishes your legal authority to set the terms of use, and requires someone using the font commercially to abide by your conditions.

You shouldn't worry about it. Hardly anybody goes to fonts2u for fonts, except by accident. There's nothing you can do about it. Welcome to the real world, where not everyone is your friend, nor are they bound by your whims.

Édité le 04/02/2015 à 09:29 par drf


04/02/2015 à 11:34

Dear toto, dear metaphasebrothel thanks for your response!

toto, I also did not get any response from them, and I guess they also will not remove my fonts from their site. They sit on the British Virgin Islands and rip fonts apart like they want. Okay, they display the font information and hint to contact the designer for licensing issues if the fonts are used commercial, which is a minimum I would expect. I even told them, that I would not mind them putting my font on their site, if they only would keep the read me and not rip the two weights apart – which really just make sense if they are provided together in one zip file. In my case it's not about any loss of profit, my ego or something, it's simply about disinformation. Why are they making their offerings more stupid than it would be, by just offering the files as original zip files? If they additionally had added installing information as a service of the provider, I wouldn't mind.
However, if I should get a response from them later on, I surely will get back to you.

metaphasebrothel, thanks for the interesting legal explanation. I'm a real newbee to dafonts and actually I should have included the whole readme in the fontfile itself. (But even there it can be removed easyly, if people just don't care about what they're doing.) I designed several "professional" fonts in the past and I always refused to manage the legal stuff, since there are foundries who earn enough money selling my fonts, so they have to handle this for me accurately. At dafonts I just made an early work available, since it otherwise would have not been released at all. But when it comes to the "real world" ... well ... :]


04/02/2015 à 13:59

methom a dit  


metaphasebrothel, thanks for the interesting legal explanation. I'm a real newbee to dafonts and actually I should have included the whole readme in the fontfile itself. (But even there it can be removed easyly, if people just don't care about what they're doing.) I designed several "professional" fonts in the past and I always refused to manage the legal stuff, since there are foundries who earn enough money selling my fonts, so they have to handle this for me accurately. At dafonts I just made an early work available, since it otherwise would have not been released at all. But when it comes to the "real world" ... well ... :]

You shouldn't need to include the whole read me in the font file. You only need to indicate that a fee is applicable, and you need to provide contact information for commercial use inquiries.

One problem with that, however, is that some of that contact information will be displayed in search engine results, and if you include an e-mail address, you'll expect to receive spam e-mails for penis enlargement pills, romantic offers from girls in Russia, phishing attempts, and money scam schemes from Nigeria and Burkina Faso. It's a good idea to set up an e-mail address that's solely for commercial use inquiries about your fonts.

All inquiries about my free fonts go to a hotmail address, and I just delete a lot of the spam that comes with it, but for any fonts that I make that are not 100% free, I use a different contact address.

Within the font file itself, you just need to establish that the font is not free for all use, and give an inquiry address, and the law will be on your side. If you are careless in your responsibilities, the law has no obligation to be sympathetic towards you.


04/02/2015 à 14:29



08/02/2015 à 12:03

http://www.lob-der-realitaet.de/

Peter Licht „In Praise Of Reality“


14/03/2015 à 15:07

fonts2u may download and offer our fonts for free, but they display google ads on 'our' font pages and, presumably, receive adsense income as a result of people visiting 'our' fonts. Doesn't that constitute commercial use?

Édité le 14/03/2015 à 15:08 par explogos.com


14/03/2015 à 16:34

It is not your font page but their page which shows your font. That is font sites business concept. Same happens here on dafont.


14/03/2015 à 17:18

I understand, but they're redistributing fonts without authors' consent to increase pageviews, which generates revenue for them (and not the author) through adsense. That's commercial use, surely?

As for similarity of business model, the big difference between dafont and fonts2u is that dafont offer revenue share participation for authors, whereas fonts2u does not.

Édité 3 fois. Dernière édition le 14/03/2015 à 17:27 par explogos.com


14/03/2015 à 17:20

And that's not the only difference


14/03/2015 à 17:45

Variations on a business concept will always be there. But, true, the fonts2u variation is very selfish and shows little respect to the authors of the fonts they are making money with. But then, what to expect from a Slowak hiding on the Virgin Islands?


16/03/2015 à 18:03

Am I right in saying most of these sites use bots to scan the web for new font releases? If so, is it practicable for dafont to implement some sort of authentication (e.g. Captcha) as part of the download process?


17/03/2015 à 00:08

explogos.com a dit  
Am I right in saying most of these sites use bots to scan the web for new font releases? If so, is it practicable for dafont to implement some sort of authentication (e.g. Captcha) as part of the download process?

I second this idea.


17/03/2015 à 09:13

Captcha as part of the download process? Brrrrrrr


17/03/2015 à 10:02

I do not know if you are open to doing what I experimented on. I initially uploaded the font with the least number of characters acceptable to Dafont. As expected the font appeared in other sites on the same day it was published in Dafont. After sometime, I updated the font with a complete character set. You can only count on the fingers of your one hand the number of sites that carry the font with the complete character set.

See http://www.dafont.com/k22-gadget.font

and compare it to the version on other sites.

It looks like those leeching sites only leech the new fonts page and not the updated page. I will do this again when I come out with another font - upload an alpha version and update it later with the full version.

Édité le 17/03/2015 à 10:04 par drf


17/03/2015 à 10:34

@ Frédéric - I don't really like the idea either, but I think it would stop a lot of these parasitic sites and, as a positive upside, dafont would gradually be seen to be an exclusive content provider.

@ toto - that is exactly what I have done with my latest upload. I also packaged the font in a zip file called '[font name] Dafont.zip' and included the following statement in my header:

"You have downloaded a version of [font name] that was uploaded exclusively to dafont.com. If you did NOT download this font from dafont.com, you have an unauthorised copy, which has been made available to you without the font owner's consent. If this is the case, the font author strongly recommends you delete this file and run a virus check on your machine. The reason for recommending this is that some sites are known to alter the original file before listing it on their own sites, making it potentially unsafe and putting your personal details at risk. Once you have done this, please visit dafont.com and download the authorised version."

I then added a message aimed at the parasites:

"... you are not permitted to make this font available for others to download. The ONLY site trusted to offer this version of [font name] is dafont.com."

I doubt this will deter them, but it might make some who visit the sites think twice about going back.

Édité 2 fois. Dernière édition le 17/03/2015 à 10:36 par explogos.com


17/03/2015 à 10:57

I doubt they will ever read this and neither the people that have downloaded from those sites. How many of the people you know, after they have downloaded a font, open the font and then check the properties; Names, Features, License, Embedding, Version, Description and so. How many - or rather how few - can even see this?


17/03/2015 à 11:18

Some sites set out the 'Basic font information' directly below the character map. This information includes the full copyright notice as set out in the header. Whilst I accept some sites don't show this information and that, in any event, most people either won't read it or won't care, I feel I have to try something; the alternative is to do nothing.

Right now, the site that kicked this discussion off has my latest font listed (with a renamed zip file! ) showing the warning I posted above!


17/03/2015 à 13:50

@explogos.com Fonts2u does not read that.

Since a fonts2u link seems to be not acceptable here, so just go there and search for my font Mallary, then scroll down until you see the entry for the License of the font. Now, do you really think people there reads what is on their pages?

Their robots probably leech from Dafont, unpack the zip, get the info for the pages and store in a database, strip everything except the font and repack it. Everything could be done without human intervention. The only thing the human there probably does is wait for the ad revenues to arrive and spend it.



Fuseau horaire : CET. Il est actuellement 13:19


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