Unbelievably, they are even citing actual copywrites!

Not only that, but if you look up other commercial fonts, many are even listed by their real names, and cite the actual (real, as in not pirated) copywrites. This is honestly ridiculous.

If I had a blood pressure pill, I'd send it over!

[Link removed by Moderator.]

Scary stuff. Seems like a Russian site. Is there anyway you can stop a site like that operating out of Russia? I hear there is little or no copyright laws over there. Surely it must be protected under international copyright - but how can that be enforced there?

Katelynn... That Bolero is actually by Canada type, different font. Alexandra did not even have the sense to check the name. Canada Type's Bolero is nothing like Pouty. The Russian beyatch has Pouty named Bolero on fonts101.com and her site.

Jay, your guess is as good as mine.

Michael

It is Russian. If you click around a bit you'll get some Cyrillic. I've stumbled on a similar site a few times that is also Russian and they freely give away fonts with immunity. I don't know if there are any regulations for downloading pirated fonts from places like Russia where such laws don't exist.

On a lighter note, Someone who was interested in my font Memoir posted on Abstract Fonts and was encouraged to buy it by another forum member.

[Link removed by Moderator.]

Stephen

Well, thats good anyway. Had I taken a closer look at the IMAGE you had in the thread, I'd have known that.

However, that just speaks to the point I was making about commercial fonts available under real (as opposed to pseudo) names.

Personally, I wouldnt download anything from that site. In my opinion, corrupt fonts messing up your system are one of the quickest ways to really ruin your day.

Yep... yours are up there too Stephen

Michael

Sorry for the double post!

Yep... yours are up there too Stephen. There are like 40 pages of P22 fonts!

Michael

Michael... you got a nice avatar.

I need one too; know where I can download one for freee!? Just kidding! I suppose I've been posting long enough I should make one.

I'll send you some photos of flowers from our gardens. Let's start a bloomin' trend.

Michael

Birds, flowers. Pretty soon visitors will think we're nature nuts.

It sucks. Options are limited, but posting the URL is just advertising for them.

well I guess track and trace the files like Letterhead does :) :0 :0
Wow check out FontGuard on Letterhead... I guess fontguard is the way to go.

Have any coder/hacker friends?

Sorry Richard!

Michael

Asking them to stop is a good first step. Often this is all it takes rather than assume they are truly aware they are even doing anything wrong. A few steps down, I am sure you could hire some local "assistance" at AtypI St Petersburg to "deal with" the "situation".

Is the onus on me to do that? I have been chastised by a foundry in the past for taking what I thought were proper steps i.e. kicking ass and taking names. I was told not to worry about the small fries... "we need to worry about the corporations." Doesn't seem the legal teams are very effective.

edit: Jupiter boy , I would love to come into a substantial sum and bomb these f****rs back into the Phototype Age!

Michael

Ok, I followed the link and noticed they are hosting advertising? I would think some well-worded letters to the companies footing the bill might be a step.

“we need to worry about the corporations.”

c'est vrai, c'est tout

That was probably good advice. Sure, send these Russians an email, but beyond that, any further effort would likely be a waste of your time and sanity.

It is just horrible how helpless a small foundry can feel in dealing with international piracy. I wish you well, Michael!

ChrisL

Man, that website has everything! If only I didn't have a conscience...

Moderators, or Tearsforsappho. Would you remove that image above? No sense making this easier than it is already.

Writing to the site via the contact form:
"Yes please and we will do all our best for you.
Please let also your partners know about our site and explain them that we are not a hackers from Russian and that we are fighting with piracy in our country as we can. Just ask them to find their fonts and we will block them for free downloading."

So identify your fonts, and ask them to stop.

Randy: I would gladly if I knew how to. After another comment comes in the thread, the edit/delete buttons go away. Unless I am a complete moron, of course.

and besides, the site and others like it come up quite easily in a google search for "free fonts".

and besides, the site and others like it come up quite easily in a google search for “free fonts”.

I think the idea is to not make things even easier to find, Katelynn... If past threads are any indication, most (if not all) of the Typophile moderators follow this line of thinking.

I too have noticed that the "Edit" buttons disappear after a while, so maybe deleting the image is a task for a moderator at this point.

In all honesty, when I put that image in there, the site address was in the header. If i knew at the time that it would become a problem, i never would have posted it. I understand the reasons why you would discourage links to such places, and from here on, i will gladly adhere to that standard.

I didnt mean to be flippant in my last comment. I apologize if anyone took it that way. That said, how do i request that someone delete it?

Wave our hands until a moderator wanders over this way? ;-)

Now I'm being flippant... You'll find contact info for the moderators here:

http://www.typophile.com/readme

@ happygooberhead (64.131.198.14 - Earthlink, New York): Jumping into conclusions?

Next time please read before posting confusing - and insulting - remarks. Please correct your post on Abstractfonts. Thank you.

I've asked Tiffany to remove that link— probably was bad idea on my part to put there. My intention was simply to break the stereotype that all free font people are out to get our commercial fonts. The post made by happygooberhead to Abstractfonts was inappropriate and I apologize to them and here as well for putting that link up.
Stephen

Stephan, no need to. Perfectly correct link. It is only the happygooberhead ...

Ironically, I requested that Tiffany remove my image as well. I guess she might be busy in this thread...

While we are playing nice and protective here, the dregs of font pirating society are out there trading favors and websites like hos.

Let's put it this way.

Our actions: One drop of rain just fell on the ocean.

My thought is that as a Type community we need to be vigilant, not just seeing who can id the latest font request. We should be searching out free sites, questionable sites etc.... acting as a protective community.

How about we form some search and destroy teams. TAAD - Typophiles Against Alphabet Defrauders, kinda like MADD.

When we catch them we can have Sister Tiffany (formally Miss Tiffany) beat their knuckles with a Pica ruler and report them to the Great and Omnipotent Ampersand for judgement. The Great Ampersand, known as E.T., will then handcuff their BCP's, correct their path direction and resign them to the first version of Font Studio.

When someone steals my fonts all I have left is my sense of humor, sick as it is!
Michael

I vote for some of those white globes like on The Prisoner.

No waterboarding Jupiterboy; )

Just kidding.

I am looking up the Prisoner as I type!

Michael

@ Michael: you realize you CAN do that?

Edit kk: Not the waterboarding ...

Relax, it is just a font

You will enjoy that. They were called Rovers and they would appear anytime someone would try and escape the island. They would somehow do you in with bad '70s video effects or something if I remember.

Omniscient, relentless, weird, but somehow never really THAT threatening.

Found it. That is a big drop... or should I say a reversed out option 8?

Should we enclose the thieves in that to perpetually bounce around the beach with no sun block?

Michael

We should be searching out free sites, questionable sites etc.... acting as a protective community.

You’d be better off just focusing on producing new fonts. Spend all the time you want trying to get your fonts of the various crummy free font websites out there and it still won’t get your fonts off Usenet, ftp servers, torrent sites, etc, which is probably where they’re coming from before they end up on free font web sites. Do what the rest of the software industry has done—either find a way to exploit piracy as promotion, or just ignore it entirely, because you can’t beat pirates.

Thanks James. I'm done producing fonts for a while until there is a shift in attitudes by the community. And I have to believe that taking them down one at a time is better than doing nothing.

But... when you have a stake in it your priorities seem to shift!

Michael

"Relax, it is just a font."

Well, to the people who make them for a living (or even as part of their living), it is their livelihood. You might as well say "Relax, it's just your ability to get food, shelter and clothing."

Cheers,

T

Appreciate it Thomas. Those that don't have an investment just don't get it.

I am even more intrigued at the thought that I should design even more fonts to offset the losses of the ones that are being pirated. What school of economics is that?

Michael

I read this site everyday for months, but this thread made my to register.

typerror, there are plenty of warez forums, there are closed community, there are more opened ones, mostly they host on rapidshare and likes(eg. they host the files of fonts), but if russian, they host on russian servers as they don't have copyright law for internet and nobody cares too. And then there are irc channels, from where you can get freshest released fonts by groups, they are pure ones, no extracts from pdf's(as they buy those fonts, to give it for free to others.) And if you are deep into warez thing there are ftp's with basically everything on them - it is warez scheme for everithing, not only fonts.
So, I don't think that anyone should care about extracts(from pdfs) as mostly fonts dont have all glyphs and all weights, and sadly there are nothing you can do about the real fonts out there(you can ask thou, to the uploader via mail or pm not to upload, they all are grown up ppl, and I think that most of them will listen to you).
And its not true that those fonts are corrupted, mostly they are pure files, as the community tend to clean the "scene" from bad fonts.
So, why I know this all - because I live in Latvia :D Im glad, that I work at company that license fonts used in projects, but 80% of companies does not. But it is how it is, because life here sux.
And, at the end, I want to say, that piracy doesnt means that you loose money(it is speculatively and wrong to say that) as many ppl try fonts, and if they loves them, they buy license. As I wont buy 4 fonts, to just show them to client in real life, but I buy the one client chooses. Maybe its wrong, but I love typography and its not possible to license every font on my computer.
And I feel sorry that you need to see you work pirated, I Know how you feel!

"Thanks James. I’m done producing fonts for a while until there is a shift in attitudes by the community."

Which community?

"You might as well say “Relax, it’s just your ability to get food, shelter and clothing.”"

Only valid if 'pirates' were actually affecting one's ability to get food, shelter and clothing.

Just had huge battle with Adobe to get some software I had purchased installed. Adobe's insane registration/serial "anti-piracy" system pretty much convinced me that I have little interest in giving Adobe much of my business.

'Relax, it's just a font' is probably saner advice than 'worry, panic, and spend pointless hours obsessing about an issue you have little to not control over'. ;o)

"that I should design even more fonts to offset the losses of the ones that are being pirated. What school of economics is that?"

'Free Market'

>’Relax, it’s just a font’ is probably saner advice than ’worry, panic, and spend pointless hours obsessing about an issue you have little to not control over’. ;o)

My neighbor owns a small shop near us. Sadly shoplifting is a fact of life, the cost of which is shared amongst the paying customers. This annoys her and the paying customers. However, on occasions she’s able to catch a thief in the act and call the authorities.

Why would you deny a type designer the right to being vigilant? Why would you tell paying customers that subsidizing the pirates is okay?

shoplifting, alas, is a flawed argument. There is a tangible loss of a sale for each unit taken.

that doesn't exist with digital copies. For each font downloaded from that Russian site, is that one sale that would have happened? Odds are, probably not. Granted, there's really no way to tell.

"Why would you deny a type designer the right to being vigilant?"

I'm not. I'm saying that it's a rather futile endeavor to go after 'font collectors' who are swapping 1000s of fonts out there on the web. So, it can be a lot of effort for no real result.

Go after commercial theft...design firms using illicit fonts for ad campaigns. Those are more likely real losses of sales.

Ultimately, if one is selling digital media, they need to realize that the technology allows for unlimited copying. That's just the way it is. So the business model needs to cater to that. What some are saying (including myself) is that it's probably best to cater to the professional, paying market. Put attention towards those customers...not the 'possible' customer of anonymous kids in Russia who swap fonts to make gig flyers.

typerror,

Please post the link to the site.

Thank you.

Sorry it took so long to remove the links. I'm on Galiano Island at Type Camp this week and I've been crazy busy.

That sounds like some type of vacation, Miss T :-)

ChrisL

That problematic site is now password protected, though I'd guess the fonts are still there.

The Fontguard system seems interesting but nowadays with so much malware around I bet there will be cases of people being prosecuted for piracy they didn't commit. As many people have their computers infected without knowing, and are open to exterior access.