Re: [css3-webfonts] Downloaded fonts should not...

Dave Crossland wrote:

> 
> MSIE and typical User Agents have a "save image as" feature on the
> right click menu when the pointer is over images in the viewport. Does
> that present the same security issue? If not, what is different about
> fonts that browser developers should look out for?

In practice, images used on the web are bitmaps.  When the owners of 
stock images license them they typically specify that only low 
resolution versions can be used on the web, so any illegal copies cannot 
be used to create high quality print work.

Fonts are vector graphics and exactly the same font description is used 
for creating the web page as for creating a high quality glossy 
brochure.  As a result, the vendors of such fonts tend to take the 
position that they will not license them for embedding on web pages 
unless technical measures are taken to make it difficult to make illegal 
copies.

A counter argument that has been made is that web designers aren't 
actually interested in embedding high quality fonts, so a boycott by the 
font vendors wouldn't be a problem.

-- 
David Woolley
Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.

Received on Monday, 14 April 2008 21:27:39 UTC