Mininova sharing fonts

[tourdeforce]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

Probably, most of you saw this already:
http://forum.mininova.org/index.php?showforum=40

As you can see, many foundries have "their own" thread there.

The reason why I ended there is cause in statistic of our page, I saw a reference link to thread where someone is asking for one our font. After that, I tried to register twice, but it says the moderators have to confirm the registration and that still didn't happened. So I tried to email [email protected] with polite and reasonable request to delete that thread cause what they are doing is illegal and it's not fair cause some guys invested their time and money to make those fonts.

Still got no answer from them...

I guess many of you would be interested to find a way how and where to react against cases like this, so I'm wondering if anyone had any success and would be so kind to share with us the way how he/she/they managed to make Mininova remove thread/files... if any of you succeed that.

I've read that some Dutch NGO 1-2 years ago succeeded to won the fight against them, probably there are some other (less known) cases where license owners won somehow, pressuring Mininova to remove illegal content.

- Dusan

[andreas]

What's life. If you are not listed you should left the font business. :-) BTW: On other sites you will get lots of links to share hosters, so you can download directly. Why I know it? They often link directly to my foundry site for the preview pictures.

[apankrat]

Dusan, I understand the drive behind wanting these threads gone, but have you considered that having this additional exposure may ultimately be beneficial to your sales? Not trolling, just curious.

[Jackson]

having this additional exposure may ultimately be beneficial to your sales?

See: https://typography.guru/forums/topic/88056-forwarding

[tourdeforce]

Alex... I know what you mean, but that's not what I meant. That's not the "plan" behind everything.

Websites such as Mininova... they end up probably to be really relaxed when it's about sharing software, cause for example, if Adobe or Microsoft has their softwares on Mininova (probably not by their own will), the question is who the hell are we, font producers, to complain about?!? Why should they "respect" our requests when big companies are not saying a word about it (at least, not in public).

Maybe foundries should group behind one email, threatening that they will hire legal team to deal with it.

[aluminum]

Note that Mininova is a bittorrent tracker. Technically, they aren't hosting any illegal files. Rather, they link to files that tell your computer where to get said illegal files from other computers. Whether what they are doing it illegal is going to matter on jurisdiction.

[tourdeforce]

Darrel, it's true, but if you check link from the 1st post, you'll see that user asks for specific font/s there, on the Forum, so if any other user have it, they use forum somehow for trading/sending each other.

Still waiting for account confirmation....

[Nick Shinn]

…having this additional exposure may ultimately be beneficial to your sales?

That doesn't make it right.
And as a business, supporting piracy (however indirectly) is not fair to, or good PR with one's paying customers.

[daverowland]

The piracy process starts with one of your paying customers. They 'lend' it to someone, who 'lends' it to someone else. I don't see why it would be so hard to embed the order number into the font, so at least you could trace the source of the leak. Sure it could easily be hacked by anyone with fontlab but I think most piracy is not so thought out. It starts with one person not really knowing that lending the font is piracy. In reality, what kind of person would pay for your font then share it with everyone else for free? Some weird philanthropist?! But yeah, mininova is a bad site for bad people. Console yourself with the fact that anyone who values their time so low that they'd rather spend hours searching to get a font free than cough up for it is never likely to pay for it anyway and even less likely to do much commercially profitable with it.

[tourdeforce]

OK. And what is the point of your post? That we should start seeding files since at the end, it's all relative?

[daverowland]

No. That there ought to be an easy way to find out who is leaking our fonts. Don't misunderstand me, it pisses me off just as much as the next foundry to see people trading MY stuff like they own it. When you see people asking on twitter, that's when you realise people don't even think of it as wrong. They wouldn't be so brazen otherwise

[tourdeforce]

Sorry for misunderstanding.

I agree with you. As an idea... major OS could request an ID/password when you want to install an font on your computer and that ID/password could be available only when you buy a license. But whatever it's made, all kinds of protection, it will leak anyhow at the end.

I'm not smart to suggest anything on this topic... seems pointless even it hurts.

[Frode Bo Helland]

This path is old, crooked and darkens all.

[aluminum]

"This path is old, crooked and darkens all."

And yet with things like SOPA, it's obvious that much of the business world still doesn't get it. Sigh.

[apankrat]

@aluminum - It's cheaper to lobby a law to try and help an outdated business model breathe a little longer than to rebuild said model.

[Kooldez]

Not for nothing but most if not all of the people on such forums are 'collecting' fonts, in some sort of obsession, just for the sake of 'having' this and 'getting' that - I'd very much doubt if more than say 5% really DO use any of them commercially
or make a buck out of it...

On a big day, it's a poster for a girlfriend or a business card for a family member.