This documentary by Danielle Hall explores why font piracy among graphic design students is so common and what could possibly be done against it. Through interviews with type designers, a copyright lawyer, university administration, type professors, and graphic design students, this documentary sheds light on all angles of this issue.
Graphic design students and teachers must understand that open source is one of the major current answer to this issue.
How so?
I think the students in the interviews made it pretty clear which typefaces they want to use and why.
OpenSource doesn’t help in this regard at all.
With services like Typekit and even google web fonts there is really no reason to use stolen typefaces on the web.
As a typography instructor at Virginia Commonwealth University, I have approached type foundries to make a package for student purchase. Only once have I received a response and they made a package of two families available at a discount. The foundries need to work with the instructors to get the students legal copies and the instructors should in turn recommend or require a font family purchase from students. This practice would reinforce the value in font families and provide the opportunity to demonstrate to students how to craft layouts with full sets of font weights and widths.
Surprising that you got little response. As someone who also offers font licenses, I think there is now doubt that students should get large discounts for fonts, in the same way as they get discounts for design software.
I our webshop at fonts.info you can get any font 30% off if you are a student or even a teacher.
When I was a student I was a big fan of underware fonts, and so I had emailed them about using the Auto family in a project. They kindly sent me copies of all of their typefaces at the time (Auto, Bello, Sauna) to freely use in my student projects. I have bought a license for Bello since. I hope to be able to afford their other faces soon.
Of course, underware is a small foundry and so was able to help me in this way, but I’m sure bigger foundries can find a way to allow students and teachers to use their fonts without having to pay.