Re: the alternative?

At 02:15 PM 8/22/96 -0500, you wrote:

>You can adopt an embedding scheme that users don't object to, or you can
>try to force a more secure scheme on the world --- but the secure scheme
>will just be ignored, and the download scenario will prevail.  I include
>authors in the term "users"; a distinction made sense for publishing on
>paper but is rapidly disappearing on the web. Users won't tolerate bitmap
>fonts (you can make them fast enough, or good enough, but not both), they
>won't tolerate schemes with indirection to a vendor font server (for both
>performance and convenience reasons), they won't tolerate font substitution
>(or so the experience with pdf suggests).

Asimov's 2 Laws of IP Protection

1) always make it easy for users to be good/fair
2) wherein it doesn't interefere with rule 1), make it difficult
   for users to cheat.
   2.1) difficulty is given by the following equation:

cost of breaking scheme - value of cheating > cost of paying/being fair

where costs and value are both in posititive terms.
_______________________
Regards,            Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. 
		    -Ralph Waldo Emerson
Joseph  Reagle      http://rpcp.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html
reagle@mit.edu      E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65  BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E

Received on Thursday, 22 August 1996 15:34:41 UTC