Re: CSS3 @font-face / EOT Fonts

On Wed, 5 Nov 2008, Håkon Wium Lie wrote:
>
> The proposal starts out with TTF/OT files and make two modifications:
> 
>  - the font is lightly obfuscated (by changing a few bits in a
>    strategic place) to stop webfonts from being easily installable on
>    local systems
>
>  - to add a new table with root strings, i.e, a list of sites and
>    pages that are allowed to use the font

Both of these hurt Web site developers, with no apparent gain for either 
developers or users. I wouldn't support such a proposal.

What's wrong with plain old TTF/OT files? They work great for developers, 
and they work great for users. Those are the constituents that browser 
vendors need to be looking out for. I don't really see why we would go out 
of our way to make things harder for developers and users just to go on a 
DRM fool's errand.

Attempts to "protect" the licenses of font developers are doomed, just 
like attempts to protect audio and video -- and we're not even remotely 
talking about something anywhere NEAR as effective as BD+ or AACS. If 
browsers were to support a standard format whose exclusive goal was to 
make TTFs only work on Web browsers and only work with certain domains, I 
predict that within days, there would be automated tools to strip these 
restrictions and convert the files into plain TTF files.

DRM is evil. Easily-circumvented DRM is pointless and evil.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'