copyright intellectual-property
Use of illegally downloaded fonts
<p>If a person downloads a font illegally, but doesn't use it for commercial purposes, what are the legal and ethical implications of their usage? </p>

<ul>
<li>Could the font be ethically (and legally) used for personal documents that aren't distributed? </li>
<li>Could it be used in the writing of a document that is later distributed, but in a different legally-attained font?</li>
<li>Could it be used in internally distributed memos?</li>
<li>Could it be used in non-advertising documents distributed under public domain (i.e. with no restrictions on copying and redistribution)?</li>
</ul>

<p>I ask because many fonts are extremely expensive to purchase for someone of limited financial means, and because I have no intention of commercially distributing any media or documents in an illegally downloaded font. </p>

<p>It turns out that there is no difference between the ethical answer and the legal answer, in this case. The law recognizes the property right which a person has when they create a thing, such as a font, and that right is encoded in the law of copyright. The relevant US federal code is contained in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Title 17</a>, which you can read (essentially identical laws exist in virtually or perhaps actually all countries). The important thing to understand is that there is not a distinction between "privately" trespassing on a person's property and "publicly" trespassing on a person's property. The violation of the owner's property rights comes from taking the material without consent.</p>

<p>There is a legally-recognized exception to the owner's rights, in the form of "<a href="https://law.stackexchange.com/q/7683/4501">fair use</a>", which is widely misunderstood to mean "if it's not for profit, the property owner has no legal protection". Simply taking and using someone else's IP non-commercially is not "fair use".</p>
