RE: WOFF without SOR?

[Christopher Slye:]

> Or, developers will disregard their license, post fonts like any other web
> asset, and be blissfully unaware of any cross-site linking. Foundries can
> educate, cajole, and enforce, but I think we were trying to minimize those
> measures.

Yes, and for most users this will work as expected. I agree many web sites 
do not want to bother enforcing same-origin at the server level and that
was very much the idea. Unless it's in their own interest to do so i.e. if 
hot-linking is an issue for a site, they'll take action. If they don't care 
it's really up to you to decide whether and how you want to nag them. But
it's up to you to enforce the terms of your license anyway.

Although it's of course a shame that a scrupulously honest site operator might 
be put at a disadvantage compared to the one who doesn't care as much. But imo
that's still better than either of them not having the option of even licensing
the font they want ! 

> Right about now, somebody will chime in to say foundries must be nuts if
> they expected a perfect world where all fonts would be perfectly
> protected. That would be impertinent. The point is that some foundries
> wished for more but accepted WOFF, and further erosion of its current
> protections will be, er, disappointing.

A recurring problem here is that the word 'protection' implies very different 
Things to different people. All WOFF really gets you is that users can't simply
do a right-click-Save As to grab a font with an out-of-the-box browser. But
most browsers do support add-on extension points that will allow that exact 
functionality to be bolted on. (Add-ons to un-obfuscate and save fonts served
by Typekit are already available, for instance).

So while WOFF satisfies your basic requirement - the user needs to take extra
steps to grab a font - this is only a low garden fence.

The problem now is that if some browsers disagree on how this fence works then
it makes your life and the life of people who operate web sites more complicated.
It also complicates the lives of web authors by creating yet another browser 
incompatibility. 

> 
> This is all a pessimistic take on the situation, but it's a viewpoint that
> might be relevant. Obviously I can't speak for other foundries, so I'm
> interested to hear other opinions.

Same here.

Received on Wednesday, 26 January 2011 21:15:47 UTC