As a primary protagonist in
this debate of Kannada fonts ( I am the M.D. of the company who produced the
Akruti Kannada font which was misappropriated by the free
software developer Mr. Sheshadri Vasu of Baraha) whether fonts should be
copyrighted or not, allow me to put my views across:
a. I think it is ridiculous
to say that by copyrighting fonts one will end up copyrighting the
language and a means of expression of the community
I think it is akin to
saying that that by allowing copyrights on a book which propounds a
particular point of view, it will end up allowing copyright on "thinking"
which is an inalienable activity of the human race.
b. A font, it must be
understood, is just a particular graphic way of
representing the alphabets and the script of a language. If a particular
graphic representation used in a particular medium ( in
this case the electronic and computer medium) is copyrighted, it is just
acknowledging the technological effort which went into
concieving that particular way of representing the script of the language.
There is no claim either on the script or the language behind it.
c. If the society really
wants, better and varied graphical forms of expression in its script,
which in turn conveys and disseminates thought and contributes to the
development of language and enriches it culturally, then according to me,
it must respect, encourage and protect the Intellectual rights of these
craftsmen and technologists who create and embellish these fonts.
d. It must be borne in
mind, that compared to the richness in Latin scripts like English, German,
French etc. which have literally hundreds of thousands of families of
fonts to convey every mood and expression, Indian language fonts are
terribly in short supply and it just does not speak well of us as a
community and nation that to convey our much richer cultural and literary
heritage, we should be confined to a few hundred fonts only. This in the
long term will lead to emasculation of our culture and language and they
may shrink and perish in such a constrained environment of expression.
e. Frankly, if the argument
were taken to its logical conclusion, there is no need for any variety in
fonts and maybe all the literature and communication of the world can be
done with just one font. How would you like a world full of only "Arial"
or "Times Roman". It would be really suffocating indeed, if you talked to
real consumers of literature and artists as opposed to lawyers, who can
very well manage all their (dreary?) activity with just one font.
f. The issue needs to be
carefully juxtaposed between the needs for variety of expression vis-a-vis
a frivolous claim on the heritage of mankind.
g. The last thing in the
world according to me would be to invite a ham handed Government which has
neither any business in this nor the expertise to enact and regulate the
creation and use of fonts. I can see terrible visions of a "Ministry
for Uniform Fonts" and a matching "Department of Font
Standardisation" looming in my head. Please keep people with
scant respect for aesthetics or culture out of this debate otherwise the
"cure" may turn out to be worse than the
"disease" !!
