Re: Proposal: Font Use Modelling

Chris Lilley wrote:

Me:
>> Of principal concern should be issues of
>> ownership, licensing, and data protection. Obviously these issues are going
>> to imply different things to different groups -- one thing to companies
>> commissioning custom typefaces, for example, and another to developers of
>> Web browsers.The point _is_ the difference, and we lack a model of these
>> differences suitable to informing the present debate.

>OK, sounds interesting. You volunteering to put forward a discussion document?

I thought we were having a discussion. Have I misunderstood the procedure?
Am I supposed to have a document before I can have a discussion? I rather
thought we could have a discussion and that might result in a document.

>There are likely to be several "fashions"; particular foundries might give
>their assent in the license for some and not others. Machine-readable licenses
>would be a help here.

Now _that_ is a very interesting idea, and certainly worthy of both a
discussion and a document. This would be one way to approach the kind of
control I have been proposing. If machine-readable licenses were embedded in
the font format, foundries could specify how a font could be legally used,
and the user's own system would ensure that they did not infringe the
license. This would also allow foundries to ship different kinds of fonts to
matchg different kinds of licencing agreements. Y&Y, for instance, does not
permit embedding in their standard licence, but offer an electronic
broadcast licence to those who pay for it (at ten-times the original price,
to partially offest the cost of piracy).

Personally, I've got nothing against embedding fonts per se. I just want the
option to say no with regard to some or all of our own typefaces, and want
other designers and foundries to have the same option. Bill McCoy and Bill
Hill may be right: endusers may object to the fact that they cannot embed
our fonts, and they may demand it of us or take their money elsewhere. But
that is an issue between us and our endusers, and I will not have Microsoft,
Adobe or anyone else telling me otherwise.

John Hudson, Type Director

Tiro TypeWorks
Vancouver, BC
tiro@portal.ca
http://www.portal.ca/~tiro

Received on Monday, 12 August 1996 14:02:43 UTC