[acherion]

The way these kinds of fonts work is that you don't host the font, they do. You link the font licence you purchased through your HTML code (or CSS, depending on how the foundry recommends you to apply the font) with a specific font URL that they provide you, which will contain unique identifiers. Then they can track how often the font gets loaded.

If your site really kicks off and you max out those visits per month (that they track on their end), they either start charging you the higher tier, cut off loading your font, or send you stern emails.

There is no expectation that you share your analytics with a type foundry.

[tobr]

That’s not true. I’ve bought fonts on Future Fonts and I received a download link to get the files. I think it’s fundamentally an honor system.

[acherion]

My bad, I assumed Future Fonts did something similar to other type foundries. Thanks for letting me know!

[JasonSage]

When there's a license you're either violating the license agreement or you're not. That's not an honor system.

[petercooper]

Not to take away from your fantastic explanation but I should note that’s not universal. There are foundries that operate on an honor basis and let you self host the font too.

[acherion]

Noted, I thought Future Fonts did the same system as many other type foundries out there, evidently not. Thanks for letting me know.

[entropie]

> You link the font licence you purchased through your HTML code

Ugh, hard pass for me. It a nice font thought

[fainpul]

What you describe is how Google Fonts handles this if you choose to use the fonts directly from Google's servers. This is a violation of GDPR. You can also download them and host them yourself, to comply with data protection laws.

https://cookie-script.com/blog/google-fonts-and-gdpr

[dpark]

This is a good thing to point people at when they claim that GDPR is simple to implement. This legal interpretation is totally reasonable but it’s probably not what most developers would expect.