Re: question

On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 11:38 AM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 10:29 AM, Peter Bailey <PBailey@bna.com> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks again. Well, this is a fascinating topic. I was hoping that WOFF would be secure enough so that nobody could actually do that, converting it back to a desktop format. I'm asking for my company. We're a publishing company and I think that it would be great if we had more power over fonts over the web. I have a favorite type designer up in NYC, but, I don't think they're open, yet, to enabling this technology. So, we're still limited as to what fonts we could even do this with.
>
> Even *attempting* to do lockdown of that nature in an open format is
> nearly impossible.  It requires encryption, which requires secrets,
> which do not mesh with "open" very well, particularly when the
> consumer of the format (browsers) are often "open" as well.
>
> This was significantly discussed during the conversations before and
> during the creation of WOFF, and was decided to be something we didn't
> want to try and pursue.

"We" being the W3C and browser vendors. Of course many font designers
and vendors were very interested in some form of DRM (Digital Rights
Management). But ultimately it became clear that browsers weren't
going to ever implement anything that even smelled remotely like DRM
for fonts, and WOFF emerged as a compromise that delivered useful
things for everyone, even if it didn't come anywhere near meeting the
initial desires (DRM) of the folks designing and distributing
commercial fonts.

Cheers,

T

-- 
How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?
Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
—Abraham Lincoln

Received on Tuesday, 28 September 2010 19:28:43 UTC