Depends on how you look at it.
For type designers, it's a sad fact of life that you cannot, in the United States, copyright the design of a typeface. That's why you see so many "budget" knock-off collections on the market.
There are two routes to making a knock off font:
The quickest way would be to open a font file in a program like Fontographer, slap an new name (font names can be trademarked) on it, and generate a "new" font. Because this involves the actual font software, it is probably illegal. There is some debate on this, and the question will, someday, be settled in the courts.
The second way is to scan a printout of the font, auto-trace the scan to create "new" outlines, and put these into a font, thereby producing a "new" font without touching the digital data. This is, unfortunately, legal.
On the market right now is a $299 font-cd containing "100 professionally crafted" fonts. In reality, this collection contains all of the fonts from the Blip in the Continuum disk, fonts from Brian Willson, SynFonts, myself, and others. In reality, most, if not all, of these fonts are knock-offs of shareware typefaces. I haven't seen the font files, so I don't know which route the producers took. None of the designers I have talked to gave permission or received compensation for the inclusion of their work on this disk.
A version of my Poptics Three typeface is on another commercial CD, under the name "ManicPopThrill." I have seen this. It is obviously a scan and trace job (and a poor one, at that). It is perfectly legal, and I receive no compensation for the resale of my design work.
There are probably more out there that I haven't seen.
What does this all mean? Well, in my case, it means I am no longer releasing shareware fonts. As a lowly individual, without a corporate legal department behind me, I am an easy target for the knock-off producers. The same goes for other shareware designers, many of whom have told me they will no longer be releasing shareware designs.
What can you do? Well, as long as the design of a typeface cannot be copyrighted, and as long as people buy these collections, they will continue to be produced. It comes down to a matter of ethics.
I cannot force my ethics on you, but I can ask you to think about your own.
Before you purchase a font or a font collection, be it commercial or shareware, ask, "Is this a licensed version of this design? Or is it a knock-off (I have, so far avoided using the terms "rip-off," "plagiarism," and "font-sucking scum-ball sleaze") of a commercial or shareware design?"
If it is the latter, there is a designer somewhere, a real person, who spent a lot of time and energy creating that font, only to see their work taken and resold without permission or compensation. Put yourself in their place.
Typeface piracy affects not only the designers, foundries,
and distributors.
In the end, it affects you, the user.
To learn more about these issues, and what you can do to help,
please visit TypeRight.Org.
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