namecheck.fontdata.com site is down creating error

[mitradranirban]

Observed behaviour

The fontdata_namecheck giving following error
ERROR
Failed to access: http://namecheck.fontdata.com/. This check relies on the external service http://namecheck.fontdata.com/ via the internet. While the service cannot be reached or does not respond this check is broken

on checking I found that the site is down for weeks

Expected behaviour

Like fontbakery maintains a cached data of vendor_id from https://www.microsoft.com/typography/links/vendorlist.aspx, a similar cached data of font names should be maintained at fontnakery server to check against.

[felipesanches]

Well... this database is (as far as I can tell) currently kept private.

@davelab6, do I recall correctly that you talked to the maintainer of namecheck.fontdata.com in the past, regarding hosting a cache of the database on a public repo? I do not remember exactly what was their response to that request.

[mitradranirban]

Instead of relying on private data of an individual, it is better googlefonts should maintain its own data of copyrighted fonts curated through Google search, so that a font name with same name as a copyrighted commercial font does not get included in Google font causing legal issues.

[felipesanches]

To be a bit more precise, this is not a matter of Google Fonts policy exclusively, but instead it is a general one. This check belongs to the Universal profile as it is useful for everyone. Nobody wants to release a new font reusing a preexisting family name.