How to Manage Fonts Without Feeling Guilty or Getting Sued?

[TimPaul]

I'd like to point out, that you can say all that kind of stuff, but what the law says and what someone says about their work, are two different things.

None of that is considered a legal type of copyright.

Don't be confused by someone putting something up that sounds legal. People and companies do it all the time, hoping no one will challenge it.

What a site like free font is trying to do is prevent it's self from being sued, because most of the fonts on its site are rip off of fonts. People take fonts, modify them slightly, and then put them up for free. This is of course illegal, and so they are trying to protect themselves.

The real purpose of Freefonts is to drive up click-through to advertising. Having a high hit rate, allows them to charge more for ad space.

EDIT: I checked with my IP lawyer friend. He says there is a conflict of interest with trying to give something away for free, and claiming it's for personal use only. Basically once you give something away, you really can't apply any conditions to it, providing the person doesn't take it and try and sell copies of it.

If you use a font in a design, and don't give the actual font file, you aren't giving or trying to sell the font.

Now, what you can do is apply a common copyright to it. Meaning anyone can use it, modify it, distribute it, but must give credit back to the original source and what they create, give away for free. Since none of this is mentioned, specifically the credit back to the source, it's not a common copyright.

Second EDIT: as with all things, if you don't feel comfortable, or worry about getting in trouble. Just don't do it. There's plenty of resources out there you can use. Or even just buy some fonts. They aren't very expensive, especially if bought over time. And if you are using them professionally, it's all a tax write off.

[Gamerprinter]

As an aside, in the most updated version of Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 9 - the application I use to create all of my maps, has a built-in connection to Google fonts allowing me to select and download any Google fonts I currently do not have using the font tool in the application. While there yet isn't the variety of fonts available, compared to other, "older" paid for sources, but there is an extensive selection of fonts, and all of it free to use. It's a nice, new add-on feature to my favorite application of choice.

[TimPaul]

As an aside, in the most updated version of Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 9 - the application I use to create all of my maps, has a built-in connection to Google fonts allowing me to select and download any Google fonts I currently do not have using the font tool in the application. While there yet isn't the variety of fonts available, compared to other, "older" paid for sources, but there is an extensive selection of fonts, and all of it free to use. It's a nice, new add-on feature to my favorite application of choice.

Adobe Creative Cloud now comes with the same thing Typekit, where you can get free fonts, for both print and web.