alt Hacker News>You really should pay, especially for work by small foundries.
You can't copyright the alphabet.
>and it's a huge problem if everyone pirates your work.
I've never pirated a font. Not once have I boarded a ship in the middle of the ocean, gun in hand, taking the crew and cargo of typography hostage.
But more seriously, I acknowledge that it's a problem. It's just not my problem.
Replies
Legally, typeface designs do not receive protection (which is based on idiotic declarations like “you can’t copyright the alphabet”) but digital font files are considered programs and thus are able to be protected as IP.¹ You can try to justify the theft to yourself but somewhere there’s an individual (or on some occasions many individuals) who spent a long time making decisions about how that typeface should look and choosing the best points to turn it into splines to describe the shape and you decided that your laziness trumps their work.
⸻
1. I would note that bitmap fonts do not receive the same protection as Type 1 or OTF fonts.
>You can't copyright the alphabet.
You're not paying to use the alphabet, there are plenty of perfectly legible typefaces that are completely free for you to use.