Re: CSS3 @font-face / EOT Fonts - new compromise proposal

Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:

 > Well, *any* form of required DRM will hinder free fonts, don't you
 > think?

Yes, I do, but I don't think that /required/ DRM was being
proposed (I may be wrong); my understanding is that the
major type foundries wish to require DRM technology
to be used when web-serving their proprietary fonts, whilst
in no way impeding  the right of "free" (or non-proprietary,
or "open source", or whatever) vendors to offer fonts for
which no such DRM protection is required.  As Vladimir said
in his second message "I am not proposing to forbid linking
to raw TrueType fonts, in some circumstances (e.g. when raw
font has "installable embedding" allowed)."

 > If I have a free font, I want to be able to use it without any
 > difficult; I want to link it directly.  The entire issue here is that if
 > you allow unrestricted linking of free fonts, there's no way to prevent
 > unrestricted linking of copyright-protected fonts either.

When you say "there is no way", I think you mean "there is no
failsafe way", but there is what appears to me to be a perfectly
acceptable non-failsafe-way : the licence for the font may
explicitly require the use of appropriate DRM technology when
web-linking.  It is up to the legal departments of the various
font foundries to review the licences for their existing fonts
and to decide what protection such licence already offers, and
whether an additional licence may need to be offered where the
existing licence precludes web usage.  If a font has already been
licenced in such a way that unprotected web deployment is permitted,
then that is the foundry's problem, and not something that needs
to be addressed here.

Philip TAYLOR

Received on Monday, 10 November 2008 15:30:11 UTC