I, and I suspect many with me, consider horisontal metrics intellectual property. The recent X Grotesk with matching metrics to a certain German type designer’s high profile sans serif definitely affected my opinion of the publisher/designer in question.
My personal opinion: The whole concept of intellectual property is inherently misleading. Copyright, patent, trademark and other monopoly rights have different reasons to exist, histories, lengths, global uniformity/variation, etc etc, and have very little in common. It is impossible to reason about "ip" because it isn't a single thing, the concept attempts to link together such disparate things but because they are so different, nothing makes sense. For example:
"a certain German type designer’s high profile sans serif"
I think you mean a certain American software corporation's sans serif, that was made as work for hire by a certain Dutch designer living in Germany.
Which is to say, I think the concept of ownership is not as simple as some people like to make out, especially for intangibles.
"It is not hard to grasp the basic shittiness of pretending someone else’s work is yours."
It's also not hard to grasp the basic shittiness of restricting other people's natural freedoms.
When we have irreconcilable differences, we have laws to balance our interests, and that's why caring about the details is not merely splitting hairs about terminology and really matters
Comments
"a certain German type designer’s high profile sans serif"
I think you mean a certain American software corporation's sans serif, that was made as work for hire by a certain Dutch designer living in Germany.
Which is to say, I think the concept of ownership is not as simple as some people like to make out, especially for intangibles.
"The dead guys stole all our best ideas"
No. But I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more cases like this.
Bury me!
It's also not hard to grasp the basic shittiness of restricting other people's natural freedoms.
When we have irreconcilable differences, we have laws to balance our interests, and that's why caring about the details is not merely splitting hairs about terminology and really matters