LHF - The $1000 font (Take a look, good read)

[Fred Weiss]

Fred I was not rationalizing the theft of software! All I am saying is they should take the fellow to court and make him pay! Maybe if this was done more people would think twice before purchasing or supplying copy righted material!

My reply was open, not addressed to you, and was addressed to several posts expressing a viewpoint with which I do not agree.

In a perfect world we would always punish wrongdoers and have the means to say that a technical wrong can be excused. Unfortunately, the licensee in a fairly common and normal act, facilitated the real wrongdoer by supplying him with the fonts which he in turn uploaded to a file sharing site.

I'm not sure if LHF has any meaningful recourse against the guy that uploaded them because his agreement is with the original licensee. Since that licensee has decided to act like a butt, the only recourse then available to LHF is to attempt to recover his damages from the licensee. The reality is that LHF will, instead, simply write off the crime and increase his prices to cover the loss while attempting to embarrass the guy and make a valid point.

My point is that the only effect response to the damage done by this kind of activity is public education. The more effective the public education the less the need to recover losses and therefore the lower the prices on fonts, clipart, applications, and practically anything one buys in general. Our prisons are full and we still have an abundance of crime. The real problem is a widespread lack of honesty and morality in these matters and with the efficiency in which theft and illegal distribution of intellectual property can be carried out.

 

[flisk]

I say take his butt to court. Get that $250 grand out of him.
Then start doing the same thing with all other software (and movie) pirates.

I had read that (this was about 6 years ago) that if there was NO pirating of movies or computer software that the retail priced would be about 70% lower than what they currently are.

Dunno how valid that is, but trust me, I'd be a VERY happy camper to only have to pay $194 for a new copy of Photoshop CS3 instead of the $649 price.

 

[javila]

I had read that (this was about 6 years ago) that if there was NO pirating of movies or computer software that the retail priced would be about 70% lower than what they currently are.

That's the biggest lie ever told about piracy. It is a great way for companies to add "losses" to their bottom line though.

 

[threeputt]

The real problem is a widespread lack of honesty and morality in these matters and with the efficiency in which theft and illegal distribution of intellectual property can be carried out.

Exceedingly well put.

Also, I for one am glad I read this announcement by LHF. It's difficult to not feel the angst with which it was written. I think it will serve to remind users of their fonts that it is only a license they hold, and agreeing to it puts the user under certain restrictions.

 

[SirSlarty]

In my opinion, people pirate stuff more now not because of prices but because it's so easy and cheap to do! Download and install, burn or whatever, no questions asked.

 

[flisk]

Could be correct there javila, but it would be nice if it were true.

 

[hydo1]

I think the fact that they raised the price of the font for a limited time until it accumulates $900 extra dollars isn't right. If I had a customer who left me with a $900 in product and wouldn't pay I would pursue him, not charge every other customer who comes in $10 extra dollars until I break even.

Regardless, the guy who sent the font to the ad agency is stupid for not cooperating in the first place. He could have avoided the whole fiasco and helped to catch the real person responsible.

 

[Fred Weiss]

That's the biggest lie ever told about piracy. It is a great way for companies to add "losses" to their bottom line though.

No, I can tell you that as a clipart developer and publisher you are incorrect.

When we bring a collection to market one of our primary considerations is how many copies we expect to sell in order to recover our development costs. These days we consider a collection a success if it sells 500 copies in the first year. Add to that the fact that in order to make it at least inconvenient for the pirates, we tie the naming strategy to a user guide. The printing of the book adds significantly to the costs of publishing the collection as well as requiring shipping instead of internet downloading.

The reality though is that for every 100 copies we sell, 1000 illegal distributions of it will occur.

The population of known sign companies in the US and Canada alone is over 100,000. How many sign companies can you name that do not have clipart available? The most successful collections for vinyl cutting have sold a total per volume in the 5,000 to 15,000 range each to a worldwide market of a couple of 100,000 sign companies along with screen printers, engravers and all the other related trades. And that's over a period of 7 to 10 years combined.

I can tell you first hand that if there were no piracy, we would sell all our collections with PDF user guides designed to make our collections extremely easy to use and at a price of 30% to 50% of what we charge now. The math is easy ... if we sold 5,000 copies in the first year of a new collection instead of 500 and at the same time reduced our production costs, we'd still be way ahead of the game at a much lower selling price and we'd be crazy not to follow that as a business model.

Unfortunately, the pirates and all the basically nice folks who either participate or remain silent make that possibility just wishful thinking.

 

[JR's]

Wow, nicely sed Fred.

 

[Service Sign Co]

100,000 is a lot of companies, should translate to a lot of profit. I haven't seen any companies within the last 10 yrs. that don't use clipart occasionally. I last heard there were 2,400 sign co's in Nevada

 

[Dave Drane]

Has anyone actually had a look at the font? It is one of the ugliest I have seen since my dad once did by hand. Although he did it nicely (without the "fish hook "S") as he taught me, I was rather more happy to try and execute Helvetica medium. Off topic there is no way I would take up valuable space even if someone gave it to me.

 

[jiarby]

Looks like it used to be an $826 font!

 

[javila]

No, I can tell you that as a clipart developer and publisher you are incorrect.

When we bring a collection to market one of our primary considerations is how many copies we expect to sell in order to recover our development costs. These days we consider a collection a success if it sells 500 copies in the first year. Add to that the fact that in order to make it at least inconvenient for the pirates, we tie the naming strategy to a user guide. The printing of the book adds significantly to the costs of publishing the collection as well as requiring shipping instead of internet downloading.

The reality though is that for every 100 copies we sell, 1000 illegal distributions of it will occur.

The population of known sign companies in the US and Canada alone is over 100,000. How many sign companies can you name that do not have clipart available? The most successful collections for vinyl cutting have sold a total per volume in the 5,000 to 15,000 range each to a worldwide market of a couple of 100,000 sign companies along with screen printers, engravers and all the other related trades. And that's over a period of 7 to 10 years combined.

I can tell you first hand that if there were no piracy, we would sell all our collections with PDF user guides designed to make our collections extremely easy to use and at a price of 30% to 50% of what we charge now. The math is easy ... if we sold 5,000 copies in the first year of a new collection instead of 500 and at the same time reduced our production costs, we'd still be way ahead of the game at a much lower selling price and we'd be crazy not to follow that as a business model.

Unfortunately, the pirates and all the basically nice folks who either participate or remain silent make that possibility just wishful thinking.

I'm not saying you're not losing out on sales. I'm saying that that RIAA and MPAA use downloaded figures and translate them to lost sales. A large portion of people who pirate things, truly never intended to actually buy them, and so that wasn't a lost sale. There is of course another percentage of people who intended to buy and pirated instead, but the "downloaded" figure should never be translated to "intended to buy sales".

Having an iron tight grasp on an industry will never yield lower prices. In theory it always works, but never in practice.

 

[onesource]

I love the pay bill button

 

[Fred Weiss]

I'm not saying you're not losing out on sales. I'm saying that that RIAA and MPAA use downloaded figures and translate them to lost sales. A large portion of people who pirate things, truly never intended to actually buy them, and so that wasn't a lost sale. There is of course another percentage of people who intended to buy and pirated instead, but the "downloaded" figure should never be translated to "intended to buy sales".

Having an iron tight grasp on an industry will never yield lower prices. In theory it always works, but never in practice.

I don't think that's a logical way to view it. Whether some folks intend to buy or not is not the issue. What is the issue is that if pirated files weren't so widely available, how many would then find legal versions as something that they would buy because they lose business if they don't. We're not talking about an iron grip on an industry. Just an honest marketplace that will buy resources that put money in buyer's pockets. I'm quite content to seek whatever business I can do against my competitors. I'm not at all happy when a trickle comes in the front door and a flood goes out the back.

How would you feel if every morning when you came to work you found a roll or two of vinyl missing and many of your customers quit buying because they now had a "different" way to handle their signage needs.

 

[javila]

That's a comparion of tangbile with intangible theft. Yes, they're both theft, but you can count it the same way.

Piracy is rampant, because it's too easy. In my teenage years I filled up with music I would never have listened to, some I never got around to listening to it. I just grabbed it cause it was there during my time wasting expeditions. Alot of people that pirate photoshop don't do it out of necessity or intend to use it for it's purpose. They just have it because they can.

Does that mean that record label lost out on the sales of music I grabbed, or that adobe lost on sales from joe blow who has photoshop on their computer for no reason other than to have it on there?

Piracy has huge numbers of distributed copies I agree wholeheartedly, but actual "lost sales" is smaller number, depending on the data in question.

 

[Gino]

Going into a business venture always carries some risk, but a risk that SHOULD NOT have to be considered is one of…. FRAUD. That’s exactly what this is. You want to keep it cute and keep calling it Pirating…. go right ahead, but it’s downright stealing of someone else’s wares.

No matter how you look at it…. it’s wrong. There’s no such thing as being a little dishonest. It’s all or none. White lies are still lies. Stealing clipart, fonts, rulers, pencils, ideas… are the same as stealing a watch, someone’s coat or a bottle of Jameson….. good people just don’t do that. I guess because it's done over the internet and you can't see the person you're hurting that makes it all Okay. Yeah, right. Because you can do something [wrong] is no reason to do something [wrong]... at least knowingly. You need to have ethics and if you defend such actions, you're a sad excuse for a person.

So remember, if you were in a different line of work..... you might go to jail for doing this very same act. When someone misrepresents themselves, it can cost insurance companies lots of money. The word in that profession is also called 'Fraud'. When someone commits such an act, it raises the premiums across the board for everyone. So when you turn your cheek to someone doing it.... you’re hurting yourself and many others in the long run.

: Why, or better yet, how can anyone justify stealing ??​

 

[bob]

Who pays for software piracy is no different than policy holders paying for insurance fraud or consumers paying for shoplifting or taxpayers paying for a bridge to nowhere. It represents a cost of doing business and is part of the equation for how items are priced.

Nonsense. Insurance fraud, pilfering, etc. incur tangible out of pocket loss. Purloining a collection of 1's and 0's does not.

You can piss and moan about lost potential business, but that's all that it ever was, potential business. Vaguely potential business at that. It's not real, no matter how hard you huff and puff and hold your breath and wish and want. It's not real. The fact is that hawking non-executable 1's and 0's for profit is inherently ridiculous. There's not a damn thing you can do if someone decides to copy your work. Nothing, nada, zip, zero. The entire concept of intellectual property of this nature is a left over from the days when the means of creation and reproduction were exclusively in the hands of the manufacturer. All you can do is rely on whatever small percentage of the market that actually buys the stuff first hand, for whatever reasons. That's all you're ever going to sell to on the best of days.

Times change, and your energies would be better spent designing a new model that actually fits the circumstances rather than insisting that progress cease and cleave to a collection of rather quaint but outdated notions of propriety.

 

[gvgraphics]

Nonsense. Insurance fraud, pilfering, etc. incur tangible out of pocket loss. Purloining a collection of 1's and 0's does not.

You can piss and moan about lost potential business, but that's all that it ever was, potential business. Vaguely potential business at that. It's not real, no matter how hard you huff and puff and hold your breath and wish and want. It's not real. The fact is that hawking non-executable 1's and 0's for profit is inherently ridiculous. There's not a damn thing you can do if someone decides to copy your work. Nothing, nada, zip, zero. The entire concept of intellectual property of this nature is a left over from the days when the means of creation and reproduction were exclusively in the hands of the manufacturer. All you can do is rely on whatever small percentage of the market that actually buys the stuff first hand, for whatever reasons. That's all you're ever going to sell to on the best of days.

Times change, and your energies would be better spent designing a new model that actually fits the circumstances rather than insisting that progress cease and cleave to a collection of rather quaint but outdated notions of propriety.

Now that is NONSENSE!

 

[Bigdawg]

I was gone a long time, but some things never change...

bob -you never cease to amaze me with the drivel that you spout out.