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

On Thursday, November 13, 2008 6:30 PM Thomas Lord wrote:
> 
> You are saying that a UA like Firefox is "supposed to"
> not let user's save fonts for permanent use.
> 
> I understand you to mean that the standard should indeed 
> Recommend such a restriction.
> 
> Such a restriction would be a "restriction against users" -- 
> directing applications which would be conforming to deny the 
> user the ability to do a well-defined, useful, practical task 
> with the data he has before him.
> 

I am just curious - when you go to a store and see something "incredibly
useful" for you to keep, right on the store shelf before you, do you put
it right into your pocket or take to the cashier to pay for it? Would
you agree that the laws that deny people "the ability to do a
well-defined, useful and practical task" - to take stuff without paying
for it - are in fact "restrictions against users"?

> It is one thing if the author of a program decides to deny 
> the user that way.  But it is a different thing entirely if a 
> global standard for computer interaction *requires* 
> conforming programs to deny the user that way.
> 
> A feature for saving font files seems to me incredibly
> useful.   I will make an effort to *make sure* that
> Firefox mainline gains such a feature.   I will certainly
> resist any attempt by W3C to require the omission of such a feature.
> 
> *That* -- rather than a "trust in UAs to do the right thing"
> is what the foundries ought to assume will happen.
> 

You know, now that I think about it, I believe those who wrote DMCA did
have a point.

Received on Saturday, 15 November 2008 02:27:39 UTC