While using a derivative of somebody's copyrighted work may be technically illegal, it's often nearly impossible for the original author to enforce. For instance, when you "derive" from a True-type font file by mapping its encoded glyph data onto a pixel grid, significant precision can be lost. As the derived work in this case is merely an approximation of the copyrighted information, it would be extremely difficult for the copyright holder to look at your finished bitmap and recognize that their font was used in its creation. Obviously this varies depending on how unique the font in question is, plus how high of a pixel resolution the now-bitmapped text is represented in. Now I'm not saying that you should rip off someone's hard work just because you can get away with it (I really hate people who argue that), as morals are another important part of the equation. I'm just pointing out that the practical implications of copyright law aren't always the same as the theoretical ones. [smile]

Md wrote:
>I wasn't aware of any exception in copyright law regarding whether or not it can be re-used by someone else ... I'd be curious to see why this extends to distributing a game which makes use of such images.

The only way to get an authoritative answer (which could well differ greatly from what I wrote above) is to consult a copyright lawyer. Since none of us are lawyers here, we're not going to resolve this question authoritatively or with any certainty. Just relaying what my lawyer advised me, some years back. Can't provide any more detail because I can't read his mind retroactively.

From what I've gathered with my internet searching, the problem with font copyrights is that the law seems to be divided on the issue. I've found a few sites that say that typefaces are not copyrightable under U.S. law. This means that bitmapped fonts are not copyrightable. Scalable fonts however can be classified as software under the law, and so are copyrightable.

Here's a link to a site. Note that it's fairly old, and the law might have changed.

However, from my understanding typefaces are copyrightable under most other countries, which could make things difficult when distributing things over the internet, and for people like me who aren't living in the U.S.

This is why I'm quite confused over the whole issue. While I'm sure for a small freeware minigame I'm sure most font creators wouldn't mind their font being transformed into a bitmapped texture for use in a game, that's not a very sound legal argument [smile]. I also don't particularly want to do anything with a font that its creator doesn't want me to do, as that's just wrong ethically. As Tom Sloper wrote, the only way to be sure is to consult a copyright lawyer, but that's a bit too much overkill for a small freeware game that I'm creating to practice my skills. As such, unless I can find a font that is perfect and get approval from the author I'll probably end up creating my own font before I first release the game; it's a skill I'll probably have to learn in any case.

I just wish international copyright law was a bit less confusing [grin]