#03 - On Font Radar, Policing & The Internet
Thoughts on Licensing Enforcement, are there any alternatives and why I am a Font Radar User
Let’s start with assuming we’re all familiar with font licensing, and if you’re not, this is probably a good place to start.
But how does it LEGALLY work? As some wise reddit user commented
There is some enforcement, but font licenses are, for the most part, an honour system. If the typeface is from a bigger foundry, they're more likely to have the means to enforce their licenses. If the typeface is from a smaller foundry, you're more likely to be taking food off someone's table if you're using unlicensed type.
(u/justinpenner)
So here’s the core of the question: where do we draw the line between love-the free-for-all-internet and correct licensing? Think Robin Hood for a moment. Think that You wouldn't STEAL a CAR?commercial, if you’re a 90s kid, you know what I’m talking about.
Would I steal from a huge corporation? Probably yes, but would I steal from a young business? Very much never. Am I completely wrong? probably.
But don’t let me derail the convo too much, and back to licensing. How do I protect my livelihood as a designer where a lot of the internet is the wild west and I am the first one pirating other stuff? You sorta can’t. Like...be my guest trying, but it’s very hard. I can barely trace back actual legit uses from people that purchased a license, just to see what they did with it, so imagine trying to police it all. And first and foremost, do I want to police anything?
I think it’s only right to make assets accessible to lower income folks and students, we LOVE what NaN is doing here:
NaN updated their license and pricing model according to the by the World Bank purchasing power parity, which means that their fonts became way more affordable for most people, specially in the Global South.
But the topic of correct licensing unfortunately has a lot of commercial involvement too. A lot of designers seem to still be confused on how licensing works, who pays for them (THE CLIENT!) and how to select the correct license for the project, which I’m shocked to think of, we never really got taught at uni either! Plus, a lot of people just assume you’ll never find out so how is it hurting you?
But it’s hurting small foundries and type designers trying to make a living out of type design & I thought we pretty much just had to accept this factor and carry on accounting for losses. Until I stumbled on FontRadar. And no, this is NOT an ad.
Their business model is fairly simple: they scan the internet (don’t ask how, I barely understand how the telephone works) and find websites that are using your fonts. Simple. Effective.
You can then cross-check with your licensees and see if they’re good bois or bad bois.
I asked founder & CEO Axel Corjon (FontNinja, FontRadar) about the idea behind FontRadar:
I love typography. As a graphic designer, it’s one of my favorite tools. It always fascinated me. I see the same typefaces used over and over, and I think it’s an issue. It’s an issue for the design quality in general, and also for the sustainability of this whole industry. My goal was always to have as many different (commercial) typefaces uses everywhere. To achieve this goal, you need to help graphic designers discover and use more typefaces, but also help type designers have a more sustainable business to be able to focus on creating new exciting typefaces.So we’re addressing both ends of this market: Fonts Ninja to help graphic designers discover and use new typefaces [and] Font Radar to help type designers get paid for their work.. and also teach end-users and graphic designers the importance of licensing fonts.
I like their double-sided approach, where policing is not punishment but part of a wider system of re-educating and re-directing.
While I love barter licenses for a bottle, which i had the pleasure to do recently with 20-something-yo George for his micro winery One Another, I go absolutely FERAL when I have to chase and remind a Huge Brand™ to pay for the font they slapped on multiple billboards in LA (and yes I am petty so I googled it and just renting 1 f*cking billboard for a week cost them more than they owed me).
Insert the internet in the conversation and it almost seems impossible to track down where fonts end up.
After a couple months on FontRadar, I feel ready to say my non required 2 cents on the product.
Vote: We like! Personally, I am heavily relying on it to find cool in-use-cases for my archives – as often you won’t get a @ or a shout from designers working on stuff with your fonts – but I did end up retrieving some £100. Frustratingly, a few from design studios.
Their plan offers a selection of different levels of commitment, and you only have to pay a fee on retrieved licenses, which we love. You can even be LAZY and go for complete assistance, and pretty much do nothing.
I have loved seeing reddit explode with people concerned when they started getting their licensing-correction emails, thinking they were being scammed somehow, not realizing it was them scamming designers in the first place.
In general the topic of policing came out quite a lot. Can we just have an it-is-what-it-is mentality when something happens online? No. We should learn that online doesn’t mean lawless, and we can agree to respect each others’ work and efforts.
So is it correct to police people into purchasing the correct licenses? YES.
Personally, I ended up manually ignoring a few personal uses, portfolio websites etc where it would’ve felt wrong to go HEY U OWE ME £30. But yes, I will be up your a** if you’re a whole company with a huge revenue but don’t license your fonts. And I think that’s the point here.
When asked about their plans for the future, Axel said they’re working on releasing a new fun project very soon:
Our next big project is a platform relaying on AI to help designers discover typefaces from every place: open-source, from independent foundries, available on MyFonts, Adobe Fonts, etc..
Read more on their Twitter thread:
https://twitter.com/FontsNinja/status/1544294424406106113
XO
G