Re: x3270 licenses
On Mon, Feb 07, 2000 at 02:50:37PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote:
> Scripsit Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org>
> > On Mon, Feb 07, 2000 at 12:55:53PM +0200, Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho wrote:
> > > > Use is covered by the Fair Use provision of Copyright
> > > > law. The fonts are free.
>
> > > Is this the n+1th abuse of Fair Use, or do you actually have some
> > > arguments supporting that claim?
>
> > You have a copy of the program.
> > You want to tell me you now need special permission to run it?
>
> I don't think your analogy holds. Remember that we're talking about
> fonts. In this case "use" entails reproducing the artistic contents
> of the font, that is, the lettershapes - so IMO use of a font must
> be considered form of copying.
>
Running a program involves copying it from disk into memory :)
> This again means that the original claim that use of fonts are
> fair use is wrong, IMO. On the other hand, in the situation at
> hand there is a blanket permission to distribute the font; that
> must also cover the special kind of distribution that consist
> of using the font to typeset a document.
>
I recall a precedent here in the US where a document was not infected by the
copyright on the fonts used therein. It seemed to say that so long as you've
lawfully aquired a font, you're free to use it when typesetting any
documents you like. You might want to check the legal archives before
deciding on this. If I recall correctly, this may have been back far enough
that fonts were still made of metal and typesetting was still done with
plates -- but it should still apply in our case.
--
Brian Ristuccia
brianr@osiris.978.org
bristucc@nortelnetworks.com
bristucc@cs.uml.edu
Reply to: