Re: New work on fonts at W3C

From: "Mikko Rantalainen" <mikko.rantalainen@peda.net>
Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 12:35 PM
To: <www-style@w3.org>
Subject: Re: New work on fonts at W3C

Sylvain Galineau wrote:
> Note that Ascender published a web font proposal last week that
> relates to this charter:
> http://blog.fontembedding.com/post/2009/06/10/New-Web-Fonts-Proposal.aspx

About that proposal...

"However almost all commercial fonts are licensed only for desktop use,
under licenses that do not allow posting to web servers."

There's no technological problem. The only problem is the license for
those commercial fonts! Creating a yet another obfuscated font format
does not change that fact that you still cannot use those fonts because
they are licensed for desktop use only!

>> Copyrighters do so because it's unsecure to allow a font to be used 
>> on the web because the font can easily be downloaded and used by 
>> anyone who's not authorised.
>>
>> If the format was secured, the problem would (less) occur.

"Commercial font developers are unwilling to allow their fonts, licensed
for use on desktops, to be posted on the web."

Again, this is their choice. Why would creating yet another format
change this a bit? They own the font, they decide how it can be used.


"Most font developers believe that without a technological check-point
(even a simple one), that web developers and server owners will not
understand that they may not simply copy a font from a workstation and
use it on the web."

Please, forward this to tech evangelism department. The key words here
are "most font developers believe". If the font developers believe in
flying spaghetti monster, creating another font format will not help
with that, either. The only real choice is to explain the situation in
terms they can understand. There's no and will not be an effective DRM
system!

>> It's your meaning. Let's other people think otherly.
>> By the way, learn that using the exclamation mark is never seen
>> as a good way to give your meaning as it seems you're closed to
>> other proposal. In fact, you don't listen to them either.

"a technological check-point (even a simple one), that web developers
and server owners will not understand"

Do we really want to endorse any technology which has the key merit of
being too hard to understand to web developers and server owners?

Also note that browsers from multiple vendors do already support plain
font files (in TTF and/or OTF format). At the same time all those
commercial fonts have to be distributed as plain font files to be usable
in the operating systems. Nothing prevents the user from putting that
plain file on a public web server... except the copyright law, which
commercial font vendors probably do not *believe* in because they're not
happy with plain font files.

>> Again, you don't look at 'Why do the copyrighters say we can't use 
>> the font on the web'... Because "there's no secured way to transmit it"
>> seems to be the key word of their arguments...
>>
>> So, yes, it may be a technological problem, too.

Also see previous thread:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2008Nov/0122.html
Especially the subthread:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2008Nov/0130.html

-- 
Mikko Rantalainen