Siphoning traffic and promoting piracy (Getty Images > Google)

KP Mawhood

Interesting development for images, that might have an analogy for fonts. Getty Images will today file a competition law complaint against Google Inc. with the European Commission.

Dave Crossland

What analogy for fonts do you see?

KP Mawhood

Good question! An analogy between creative disciplines, that is open to interpretation.

e.g. I don't have a solid answer for you, at present.

Denis Moyogo Jacquerye

The analogy would be if a hypothetical search engine allowed one to search for, let’s say, "Helvetica" and preview the matching fonts on that site, each preview would be the full version of the font and could be downloaded without having to go to the webpage where it is being used.

KP Mawhood

@Denis Moyogo Jacquerye Isn't that equivalence? Analogy only needs to be partial – it's a comparison. In this comparison, what facets take the focus? Are they symptoms, causes, grouping mechanisms or something else entirely?

Unfortunately, your hypothetical example also seems very much alive.

Dave Crossland

Katy Mawhood said:

Unfortunately, your hypothetical example also seems very much alive.

How so? If you go to google fonts and search for Helvetica, you see a preview of actual Helvetica (typesetting itself) and links to Monotype's fonts.com sales page

KP Mawhood

@Dave Crossland Google isn't the only website with a search engine.

Ray Larabie

If you Google some of my fonts, the pirated version shows up at the top of the list.

John Hudson

Yeah, and shit like this.

Nick Shinn

The pot calling the kettle black:

…presenting content in such a way that it deters users from engaging with content creators…

An apt description of the way digital stock agencies—PhotoDisc (Getty) and Digital Stock (Corbis) were the key players—decimated the livelihood of photographers, by making royalty-free images available at a fraction of the cost of custom shots.

But of course, analogies are never exact.

If you are interested in how the digital stock industry emerged, there is a history of it in my 2002 article, Art from Turmoil.

Jackson Showalter-Cavanaugh

…presenting content in such a way that it deters users from engaging with content creators…

Like when MyFonts decided customers should "follow" designers there, without asking or involving the actual designers. 


 


On the original topic, I don't see a parallel in fonts. But in general, Google's ambivalence to unlicensed content, evidenced by their reliance on a laughable inadequate DMCA process, and traffic-driven business model makes the internet pretty crappy for IP creators. The worst offender is easily YouTube.