The Cult of the Cool Mac: Made with 100% USDA real meat!

After a few weeks AFK, we're all back on track here at our new offices in sunny Virginia.

Nobody here is about to point out how disappointing the stats are on the less-than-revolutionary new G4 desktops.

Instead, I'm going to address a lapse on the part of one of my favorite websites. The Register ran an article about the application of copyright laws to fonts and they weren't particularly clear on US law. I should mention that they were quoting a letter and so the misleading article was more like an opinion-piece. Still, there is one quote that is entirely wrong:

"In the US, there is no copyright in the actual outlines of the letters"

In fact, according to the US copyright office, the "outline," which commonly refers to the postscript code used to generate the font on your screen, is precisely the part of the font that is protected under copyright law. It's the "typeface," the unique look of the font, that isn't protected. So until your computer "rasterizes" the font from the outline into pixels on your screen or for your printer, the creator of a postscript font will still have rights to it.