- From: Christopher Slye <cslye@adobe.com>
- Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:42:55 -0700
- To: "robert@ocallahan.org" <robert@ocallahan.org>
- CC: www-style@w3.org
On Jun 22, 2009, at 5:12 PM, Robert O'Callahan wrote: > It seems font vendors keep drifting into a belief that EOT somehow > "protects" their font data. So let's repeat the truth again: it does > no such thing. It only forces a user to run an tool over the font > file after downloading it and before reusing it. Any other mechanism > that requires the user to run a tool over the font file before using > it has exactly the same deterrent effect. > > That tool could be something as simple as a browser extension that > automatically converts every EOT file that is downloaded to TTF/OTF. > Alternatively, someone could develop an Apache module that > automatically rewrites the EOT rootstring to match the server's > hostname, for every EOT font served. That would actually be quite > convenient for Web developers since it would address the staging > problem. I see no evidence that anyone's perception of EOT has drifted. We got behind it because we looked at it and decided that it was "enough protection" for us. At Adobe, we certainly understand what EOT is and isn't. I've not heard anyone claiming that EOT is perfect font protection -- but it (and some similar proposal, in theory) offers enough of what we have decided we need before licensing our fonts for use on the web. By the way, there is nothing objectively truthful about the statement "EOT does not protect fonts". The notion of "protection" is so dependent on a number of technical, legal and relativistic interpretations that it's not particularly helpful to pretend otherwise, IMO. Regards, Christopher
Received on Tuesday, 23 June 2009 00:43:32 UTC