- From: Adam Twardoch <list.adam@twardoch.com>
- Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:07:26 +0200
- To: www-style@w3.org
- CC: Mikko Rantalainen <mikko.rantalainen@peda.net>
Mikko Rantalainen wrote: > I'll repeat the parts that I feel were important: > > (1) Commercial font vendors do not want to license their fonts for web > > (2) Effective DRM system does not exist The problem is neither that commercial font vendors do not want to license their fonts for web, nor that there is a need for an effective DRM system for fonts. The problem with fonts, as perceived by the commercial font vendors, is that digital fonts are highly usable across various media, and that they are highly re-usable. You may try to dismiss the following, but please try to take my word for it: fonts are much more re-usable than any other kind of digital content. Text, images, music, film or other graphic content is mostly only useful in one particular context. This kind of content often makes sense just in connection with other kinds of content that is of similar kind. There are exceptions, of course: news headlines and short news reports are very useful in a variety of contexts, and this is why companies such as Reuters are objecting to services such as Google News to the point where they seem to regret to having themselves invested into technologies such as RSS. Now they think they shot themselves in the foot, because it is the aggregators such as Google News that are cashing on the content rather than the content originators. Those kinds of content I mentioned are also of limited use across different media. For print use, high-resolution CMYK-based PDFs are images are useful, but on the web, you will rather find low-resolution RGB images. In addition, content that is directly consumed and directly takes screen real estate (such as text or graphics) can be refinanced to some extent by the inclusion of ads. With fonts, it *is* all different. In this regard, fonts are more like software than they are content. Fonts do not represent content themselves, but are rather highly flexible, repurposeable digital assets that assist in content presentation -- much more like ActionScript or JavaScript used to "drive" a website. But then, lots of complex software is highly tied to particular website implementations or runs on servers altogether, so it's rather difficult to repurpose it in an unauthorized manner. But fonts are small, enclosed, yet highly performant digital files that take months or years to design and develop, and once done, can be used to style the content in a vast number of different contexts. With non-Latin writing systems, the complexity even increases, and well-developed, highly-complex fonts so much as allow proper rendition of text that was previously unreadable (so it's not just about stylistic variety but about the question of orthographic correctness). And, the digital fonts in OpenType format are as performant that you could see them more like the "studio master tapes" for music than the compressed MP3 files. What the commercial font vendors want is not really a technical measure to completely prevent others to obtain the font file and re-use it (in other web contexts or in different media). In most cases, they do not want an impenetrable wall. Much rather do they want some simple way to put a fence around their property and put a label on it that says "no tresspassing". Jumping the fence is doable. The fence is a psychological and legal barrier, rather than a viable technical one. Simply speaking: commercial font vendors do not want that any user grabs their font from a website that uses it, downloads it and uses it for his own purpose (install on his desktop system and use it in a text processing application such as Word, or graphic design application such as InDesign or Photoshop). Commercial font vendors would prefer if desktop fonts stayed desktop fonts, and web fonts stayed web fonts. Also, commercial font vendors would like to be able to put a label into a web font that says "this font belongs to this website". Nothing more. The EOT font format submitted to W3C by Microsoft and Monotype Imaging (http://www.w3.org/Submission/EOT/ ), and implemented in Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows since version 4.0 delivers just that: it uses a different container package (.eot) that is not directly usable on a desktop system, and it uses a simple way to label the website which the font has been licensed for. It's not a technical copy protection mechanism. It is technically trivial to convert an .eot file into a .ttf file that is usable on the desktop. But the different packaging prevents "accidental misuse" -- it is like the fence. And the labeling that ties the font to a particular website is like the "no trespassing" sign. If a user decides to jump the fence anyway, he or she will be aware that they are crossing a social or legal norm. It's this low-hanging psychological barrier that the majority of the commercial font vendors wants, and would be happy with it. Best proof for that is that just two weeks ago, one of the largest commercial font vendors in the world (Monotype Imaging, that controls the Monotype, Linotype and ITC font libraries, with some 4,000 OpenType fonts in their combined assets) has introduced a new font license that allows users to use any of their licensed fonts on any non-commercial website -- but only if they do so using the .eot web font format rather than using the .ttf or .otf desktop font formats directly. Here's the announcement: http://ir.monotypeimaging.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=387305 As I explained, most commercial vendors don't want an "effective DRM system". They want a simple psychological barrier that makes unauthorized font reusal "just a bit less than trivial". EOT delivers that. It is publicly specified, ready-to-use, and already implemented in one of the major web browsers. Regards, Adam -- Adam Twardoch | Language Typography Unicode Fonts OpenType | twardoch.com | silesian.com | fontlab.net The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer. (Henry Kissinger)
Received on Tuesday, 16 June 2009 14:08:14 UTC