Re: css3-fonts: should not dictate usage policy with respect to origin

On 18 Jun 2011, at 23:29, John Hudson wrote:

> Further, the same origin restriction is not simply an issue related to font licensing models, but also author/publisher preference (which may be informed by info leakage concern, or by a desire to limit external access to their digital assets, whether licensed or custom fonts). This is why I think Anne's from-origin header proposal is such a good idea: it puts the decision where it should be, in the content publisher's hands, presuming compliance with the from-origin header restrictions/permissions on the part of the UA, and compliance of the author with the font license, whether it be restrictive or permissive.


I think the issues related to expressing authorship, licence compliance etc that the creation of the webfonts spec unearthed are interesting and important across the web and I hope that they are taken as far out of this particular silo as they can be.

It looked to me that the webfonts discussion gave a new dimension to discussions around CORS; it framed the ideas in a different way that was about rights and intellectual property rather than about security exploits in UAs.

Although it seems it's distasteful to many technologists on the web, that need to acknowledge business and legal needs in web standards seemed to be tackled well in the webfonts discussions and I suspect better than it has been elsewhere.

Ben

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Ben Weiner | http://readingtype.org.uk/about/contact.html 
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Received on Saturday, 18 June 2011 23:15:19 UTC