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

On 12 Nov 2008, at 23:08, Thomas Phinney wrote:

> It seems quite unlikely that a critical mass of type foundries would  
> be willing to license their fonts for use on publicly accessible web  
> servers, if the protection for those fonts is limited to pure  
> information and UAs and the web font architecture do not do anything  
> to help the situation.

But there again, what DRM you use is surely irrelevant when the  
majority of fonts shipped are DRM free (as no major OS supports DRM'd  
fonts), and those can be freely uploaded and pirated? If I wanted to  
pirate a font, would I really look for a website that uses it and get  
it from there, or would I look on a torrent tracker? Even if I saw a  
font on a website I wanted, I would then have its name (assuming  
people use the font's real name in @font-face, which I assume in  
general would be the case) and could find it on a torrent tracker.  
Unless you can DRM all copies of a font it serves no good, and when in  
this case (web fonts) the subset of shipped fonts DRM'd for web use  
the DRM would have to be open, it would easy to remove.

DRM of fonts serves absolutely no use. It will not stop piracy  
whatsoever. DRM of video has not helped (even VHS supports DRM). DRM  
of music has not helped. How will DRM of fonts be any different?

Is there no way to convince the foundries that DRM will not curb  
piracy whatsoever?


--
Geoffrey Sneddon
<http://gsnedders.com/>

Received on Thursday, 13 November 2008 21:31:21 UTC