Copyright, IP, and our Button Guide

[James Gholston]

There is something I very much meant to bring up during the materials
report but forgot to.

I'm very strongly thinking in terms of releasing our button guide to the
public domain and Creative Commons Zero.


Language I'm considering (replace Otecember with probably December, but
I can't rule out January or even February 2024):

_Published Otecember 2023 by the Libertarian Party Radical Caucus (a
US-based 527 organization) and released to the public domain, No Rights
Reserved. For jurisdictions where this is restricted or not permitted,
it is also released according to the terms of the Creative Commons Zero
licence._

https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/


Who has the strongest arguments against this and how strongly is that
opposition?


Also, how should we establish our trademark claims to our logo and name,
especially in the button guide that may be getting released to the
public domain/CC0?


From our platform:

2.13 Intellectual Monopoly and File Sharing

The phrase "intellectual property" is a misnomer. What the state calls
intellectual property is more accurately referred to as "intellectual
monopoly" as the state grants a monopoly on the use of an idea, or goods
and services derived from an idea, to a certain limited group. We call
for the elimination of the protection of such monopoly thereby freeing
the market, encouraging content providers and product developers to
improve on existing products thereby bringing more and better choices to
the market.

In particular, we call for the end of the prohibition of online file
sharing, just as we oppose all victimless crimes. When content is shared
it is not stolen as no one loses any property, only a potential loss of
some future revenue, which is natural in any open market.

[Sinfulcat]

I received this and seem to be able to respond to all. Since my email situation was discussed at the meeting last night, I thought I should let everyone know. 

C

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[Susan Hogarth]

Wording sounds great to me James. Barring any objection, just run with it. Thanks for all your work.

For trademark claims: let’s not.

Susan Hogarth
919-906-2106

> On Nov 13, 2023, at 2:38 AM, James Gholston <jam...@dimensionality.com> wrote:
>
> There is something I very much meant to bring up during the materials report but forgot to.

[James Gholston]

On 11/13/23 12:31, Susan Hogarth wrote:
> Wording sounds great to me James. Barring any objection, just run with it. Thanks for all your work.<

There's objection. Hopefully if this can't be resolved before the next
board meeting it can be resolved AT that board meeting. Especially if
answering this becomes the main bottleneck for putting it and my ideas
for using it beyond my original objectives into play.

> For trademark claims: let’s not. <

I'm not wanting to public domain our name and logo. That could result
on people sticking it anywhere they want to, frequently to represent
things that we not only would vehemently disapprove of but could harm
us. Yes the government-controlled trademark situation is suboptimal,
but I'm pretty sure we'd have some mechanism even in a proper anarchy
otherwise it would be impossible to do business on a non-generic basis
without extensive fraud. Possibly similar to how title companies operate.



Any other feedback?

[James Gholston]

I've made no secret of the fact that I believe the proper duration to
hold on to elements of a branding standard is forever. Unfortunately,
as with our dark gold color that wasn't consistent across different
media, I find that we may want to make a refinement.

For quite some time the non-free nature of Fontourist Journal has
concerned me, and the last time I looked it up it was less free than
before (the implication being that a donation is no longer sufficient
for non-personal permission to use it; I threw in a $50 donation, but it
was after this change and likely moot).

The reason it was selected in the first place was to make it easier to
create materials that resemble LNC materials. Something we've generally
not been trying to do in actual practice.

As we don't often have a need for it, the problem with Journal is
usually almost academic, but right now I'm trying to implement some
cartoons to put on what would otherwise be blank pages in the button
guide. ...Might even help with the reading rate. I need a typeface for
this now.

I'm wanting to use a brand typeface (as opposed to something ad hoc).
I'm also hoping to get some feedback so that I'm not presenting the
board with a unilateral judgement call out of the blue next month when
someone else may have a viewpoint or something to contribute on this.

I'm also wondering if we need two typefaces for this: a tidy one and an
expressive one. Fontourist Journal is firmly on the expressive side,
and ideally I should use something more on the tidy side for this use case.

Criteria:
* The font must be freely available, open source, and suitable for all
potential uses, including redistribution and modification. Fonts with
restrictive licenses or those that impose GPL obligations on our vector
documents are not suitable.

* Is it something consistent with what we want to say through time about
our caucus?

* How many fonts does it include? Different weights, maybe italics, and
maybe variations could be quite helpful.


If we want to consider separate expressive and tidy options, there's two
ways to do this: select both at the same time and immediately deprecate
or jettison Fontourist Journal, or select just a tidy one for now and at
least nominally keep Fontourist Journal for expressive for a little longer.

Here is a set of contenders that I've managed to put together. This
doesn't need to be considered the final list of possibilities -- if none
are sufficiently popular among those of us who care about this or if
someone wants to throw in some additional candidates, I'm all for it.

Expressive:
Caveat, 3 fonts, SIL OFL
Fontourist Journal, 2 fonts, non-free and the one I regret recommending.
Indie Flower, 1 font, SIL OFL
Steve Hand, 1 font, GPL3+Font-Exception

Semi-Expressive:
Kalam, 3 fonts, SIL OFL
Rufscript, 1 font, GPL3+Font-Exception

Tidy:
Patrick Hand, 2 font, SIL OFL
Short Stark, 1 font, SIL OFL

If we decide we want to create our own, unique handwritten font family,
I can make a stab at it. I have plenty of ideas. It will cause a delay
for my immediate objective, but getting our typeface selection right
this time is more important in the long term.

Most of these use the SIL Open Font Licence, which lets us do anything
we want except call any of our modified versions the same name as the
source typeface. This sounds academic, but it's already come into play
with Alegreya, our serif typeface (the one on our buttons).

[Susan Hogarth]

“I'm also hoping to get some feedback so that I'm not presenting the board with a unilateral judgement call out of the blue…”

Please DO make unilateral judgement calls on these matters, James. We trust your judgement here and I don’t think it’s something we need to, or ought to, be taking meeting time to discuss or decide.

Make your choices (I would rather you not spend time creating an entire font set for this project, but if it’s something you’re passionate about of course it’s up to you), write it up, and we can ask for objections if you feel it needs formal approval. But we can’t devote a significant fraction of meeting time to something you have given extensive thought to and the rest of us almost none.

Susan Hogarth
919-906-2106

> On Nov 16, 2023, at 3:05 AM, James Gholston <jam...@dimensionality.com> wrote:
>
> I've made no secret of the fact that I believe the proper duration to hold on to elements of a branding standard is forever. Unfortunately, as with our dark gold color that wasn't consistent across different media, I find that we may want to make a refinement.

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[James Gholston]

Susan Hogarth wrote:
> “I'm also hoping to get some feedback so that I'm not presenting the board with a unilateral judgement call out of the blue…” <

> Please DO make unilateral judgement calls on these matters, James. We trust your judgement here and I don’t think it’s something we need to, or ought to, be taking meeting time to discuss or decide. <

I'm asking on the list (and in a chat or three) and not trying to get a
direct opinion of literally everyone on the board. 8)

Certainly not cold at the board meeting. I'm trying for the opposite of
that.

Trying to get more takes than just my personal one as well. I'm sure in
six months I'll easily be able to get a detailed review of options from
a large multimodal language model with an extensive knowledge of
typefaces, art history, graphological analysis, and other means of
making a better assessment than any of us, but that's six months from
now and not between now and the end of the year.

A purely subjective take of "this one doesn't look radical enough" or "I
was always a fan of proprietary handwritten font X, can you find
something else like it" or similar will be helpful right now. 8)

[Susan Hogarth]

Thanks for clarifying, James! It’s a great idea to use this list for feedback. Appreciate all your hard work.

Susan Hogarth
919-906-2106

> On Nov 16, 2023, at 9:18 AM, James Gholston <jam...@dimensionality.com> wrote:

[Morey Straus]

I don't have any strong feelings on branding topics. Happy to support whatever you recommend, James.