I'm actually a designer, have paid for many fonts - including licenses for websites - have made a couple myself and have a good idea how hard they are to make.

That said, a certain corporation's bought up a load of fonts made over the past x decades and is making a tidy sum selling old rope again and again without adding anything of value, or funding the original designers/converters, so I'm quite happy to illuminate how an individual can get around such things for use on their personal blog with an audience of ten, should they so wish.

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ed - you're also not as likely to be able to get a whole usable font from a small foundry in the first place, without buying it.