Re: CSS3 @font-face / EOT Fonts

Also sprach Bert Bos:

 > A meeting at this year's W3C Technical Plenary led to a proposal
 > for new technology that might well be a step towards solving the
 > current standoff. The meeting minutes and an initial description of
 > the proposal, with the provisional name "rooted fonts," are here:
 > 
 >      http://www.w3.org/Fonts/Misc/minutes-2008-10

Thanks for typing up the discussion and proposal. I think we should
try to reach a compromise on this issue. 

The proposal starts out with TTF/OT files and make two modifications:

 - the font is lightly obfuscated (by changing a few bits in a
   strategic place) to stop webfonts from being easily installable on
   local systems

 - to add a new table with root strings, i.e, a list of sites and
   pages that are allowed to use the font

I've done some soul-searching on this and reached the conclusion that
I can live with the first part, but not the second; I don't want web
resources to have inherent page/site restrictions. It breaks with a
fundamental principle of the web, that web resources should be
reusable. Further, it may violate the "fair use" doctrine of copyright
law. If root strings are accepted for fonts, content providers would
soon ask for root strings in images and video as well.

Cheers,

-h&kon
              Håkon Wium Lie                          CTO °þe®ª
howcome@opera.com                  http://people.opera.com/howcome

Received on Wednesday, 5 November 2008 22:53:39 UTC