Since they are not copyrightable, why do people pay lots of money to the foundries to use them? Seems like we'd be able to freely distribute things like Gotham, and anything from Veer.
Things like TrueType font files are considered computer code and copyrightable, because they have some embedded scaling and kerning logic, which makes it a bit harder to just use them free. The designs themselves (in the U.S.) aren't copyrightable though, so anyone can legally rip off the font by e.g. tracing it. There are quite a few of those floating around, but they have a reputation for being poor quality, esp. with kerning and such, depending on how quick the tracing/repackaging job was. That, and there's a risk that if you used one of the "ripped off" fonts and it was different in a way that was noticeable, your publishing house / design firm / etc. would get a bad reputation in the trade.
