Free sites stealing/pirating your fonts for download

Adam Ladd
Adam Ladd Posts: 263
in Type Business
I've already had to send DMCA notices, but what a hassle against sites like UXFree and others, that steal your fonts from distributor sites and make them a "free" download. In one case they removed it and then a few months later uploaded the same font family, but with a different url.

Anyone else continually run into this and know of any better solutions?

Comments

  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,432
    I couldn't find a cost effective solution. Manually sending DMCA notices i out of the question for me as I have hundreds of fonts. Also, it's a lot of work to track sites that failed the initial "ask nicely" approach  or where the contact forms don't work. And as you said, the fonts usually come back a couple of months later. I've never seen any of the automated DMCA takedown services that had fees that would be feasible unless perhaps if it were for a dozen or so fonts.
  • Cory Maylett
    Cory Maylett Posts: 248
    Adam Ladd said:
    Anyone else continually run into this and know of any better solutions?
    Yes to the first question. No to the second.

    I've found that about half the sites will remove a font when requested, but as noted, it usually shows up again a few months later. It's like playing whack-a-mole.

    I suppose some consolation can be taken from the assumption that few font thieves would have ever purchased what they've stolen anyway.
  • Kemie Guaida
    Kemie Guaida Posts: 21
    I have a wordpress plugin that semi automates the process of sending dmca notices (you paste in the urls, the notices get sent automatically), but it's stopped working lately
  • Rob Barba
    Rob Barba Posts: 86
    Kemie Guaida said:
    I have a wordpress plugin that semi automates the process of sending dmca notices (you paste in the urls, the notices get sent automatically), but it's stopped working lately
    I wish they had one of those for Joomla.
  • AzizMostafa AzizAli
    AzizMostafa AzizAli Posts: 103


  • RaseOne
    RaseOne Posts: 9
    My foundry has always had a huge problem with piracy. I agree that maybe half of sites would respond to being asked nicely. The same half tend to respond when asked less nicely. I had always found that if the infringement were serious enough & especially if it was a repeat or serial offender that the most effective course of action was to send notices directly to Google Adsense/Adwords since there is a roughly 105% chance that the site in question is being sponsored & promoted by Google. It works better if you have a registered copyright & can include the registration#, even better if you also have a registered trademark on the font name. Of course you should give the site a chance to comply before you go over their head. 
  • NickCurtis
    NickCurtis Posts: 4
    It's a problem which you have to learn to live with, especially in a culture which keeps reminding us of all of the things we deserve.

    It could be worse: twenty years ago back in my freeware days, a couple of outfits were opening my fonts in Fontographer, renaming them and changing the copyright notice, and then selling the fonts as their own.
  • notdef
    notdef Posts: 168
    This still happens a lot with custom fonts.
  • Lars Schwarz
    Lars Schwarz Posts: 114
    I offer a (free) service for this. You can register for an account via https://namecheck.fontdata.com/
  • Thomas Phinney
    Thomas Phinney Posts: 2,888
    When I first read Lars’ post, for a moment, in the sequence of posts as it is, I parsed it as him saying he offered a free service for opening fonts, renaming them and changing the copyright notice....   :# 🤢
  • Lars Schwarz
    Lars Schwarz Posts: 114
    Ha, no, but I have a tool that doesn't care about file names or name table changes, but uses a digital fingerprint to identify fonts :p

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