Time to fight back and kick some ass: Free DMCA removals and "collective" takedowns

Lars Schwarz

I added a new functionality to the Namecheck tool: DMCA removals (for Google and GitHub). You can register for a free account here: https://namecheck.fontdata.com/register/

Once approved you can on one hand edit your submission to the Namecheck tool and you can also create free DMCA removal requests. 

To do that be sure you first maintained your current font family records to be sure each entry/record has a respective link preferably pointing to a (visual) example of the font family (specimen). 

In the following days I'll be adding another section that lists current piracy websites. For those sites that host a lot of illegal font download that affect various members I'm working on a "collective" takedown feature. Stay tuned.

Stuart Sandler

Fantastic Lars! Was just commiserating recently about how there still aren't any great tools for DCMA removal for font makers.

notdef

Registering a name before the typeface is made public seems to me possibly in conflict with current practice and (at least) EEA law, where the first to publish or make public a name retains the rights to the trademark in their specific field. If all registered names are listed the data might not be as valuable for a professional actor, and at the same time in danger of scaring some away from what would otherwise be their legal right.

Lars Schwarz

Frode Helland said:

Registering a name before the typeface is made public seems to me possibly in conflict with current practice and (at least) EEA law, where the first to publish or make public a name retains the rights to the trademark in their specific field. If all registered names are listed the data might not be as valuable for a professional actor, and at the same time in danger of scaring some away from what would otherwise be their legal right.

Not sure what you refer to Frode?

notdef

Not sure what you refer to Frode?

The form that allows foundries to register font names. I probably could have worded it more clear, and I am not certain there is a conflict. I just wonder what happens if I add all my future planned release names to your form, or just copy paste a huge list of words with 2–7 letters. 

The “first to publish” provides a modicum of a barrier: I need to make it first, and only then name it to get the rights. 

Lars Schwarz

Frode Helland said:

Not sure what you refer to Frode?

The form that allows foundries to register font names.

This is actually no legal registration of any kind nor a way to "block" names. "Register" just refers to adding existing family names to the service/tool.

notdef

(Apologies for ninja edit. Tried to clarify the context.)

I understand this is not an official register. Font naming also typically (disregarding US) does not go through such official channels. I worry that a newcomer might consider the fontdata search the closest thing to a trademark search.

Lars Schwarz

Can you elaborate please? Not 100% sure about your actual concern tbh.

notdef

Ah, words are my enemy. 

1) I, speculative type founder, register millions of font names in the Fontdata-base that are not actually used (yet)
2) New font person comes along, and they want to use name “Xyz”
3) Finds your website
4) It says I already “used” name “Xyz”, although I merely filled in a form and never designed a typeface called “Xyz”
5) New font person has little knowledge of trademark law, but is scared to challenge this, and shy away

Lars Schwarz

All submissions are verified first unless you registered for an account and add them yourself, but accounts also get verified first. 

Dave Rowland

Hey Lars, thanks for this tool! When you say the DMCA takedowns are for Google and Github, what does that mean? For example - I have some of my fonts on a pirate site, if I do a takedown request through you, does that just remove any links to that page from Google, but the page is still there?

Lars Schwarz

Dave Rowland said:

... if I do a takedown request through you, does that just remove any links to that page from Google, but the page is still there?

For Google it removes the link from the Google search results, for GitHub it removes the files from the respective repositories. For complete takedowns, stay tuned, working on that 

Ramiro Espinoza

I tried it yesterday and today I found most of the links had been removed from Google. Thanks a lot!

What about other search engines like Yahoo, etc?

Lars Schwarz

Ramiro Espinoza said:

What about other search engines like Yahoo, etc?

Yahoo is currently out of scope for the free service. I will however extend the functionality in general and maybe even look into supporting others like Bing or even Yahoo. 

Roel Nieskens

Lars Schwarz said:

Dave Rowland said:

... if I do a takedown request through you, does that just remove any links to that page from Google, but the page is still there?

For Google it removes the link from the Google search results, for GitHub it removes the files from the respective repositories. For complete takedowns, stay tuned, working on that 

How does this work for Github? You can submit a pull request to remove the files, or open an issue to ask the maintainers to do so, but both need action on the maintainer's side. If they aren't willing, nothing will be removed, right? During my own Github adventures not many repo owners seemed very willing (on the contrary, they became rather defiant).

Lars Schwarz

@Roel Nieskens For GitHub we submit actual DMCA takedown notices. The repository owner than has 24 hours to remove the infringing files from the repo, otherwise GitHub will remove the repo completely.

Roel Nieskens

Ah I see, you're going straight for DMCA takedowns. I'm curious to see how this goes down with the Github community. Even if you're fully within your rights, the developers don't always see it that way.

I understand this might be asking to taste from the secret sauce, but will you be sharing stories or numbers on how effective this is?

Lars Schwarz

@Roel Nieskens I'm currently working on bringing back automated infringements detection, until now GitHub removals had been based on "manual detection" by the copyright owners. For those previous reports all had been 100% effective/removed. 

Adam Ladd

Hi @Lars Schwarz ... curious if any new developments or still active? Was going to look into using it, but haven't proceeded yet. Thanks for your work!