- From: Chris Wilson <Chris.Wilson@microsoft.com>
- Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:01:33 +0000
- To: Dave Crossland <dave@lab6.com>
- CC: "www-style@w3.org" <www-style@w3.org>
Dave Crossland wrote: >It becomes DRM when you say, "UAs are expected to honor those [restrictions]" If a web font says "I'm only licensed to be used on myorg.com", it's DRM if UAs don't render it on other domains too? >A non-DRM web font format to me means "web font format that specifies >what license and restrictions the font carries, font vendors define >those restrictions, and the UAs are expected to display them to users, >but there's no strong crypto or single-vendor-controlled system >'protecting' the font or UAs enforcing restrictions on users." UAs won't "display [licenses] to users." My mom doesn't want to see the license for Comic Sans, nor would she know what to do with it. >I agree that scarcity of licensing information in file metadata is the >central problem Yup. >fonts would not be directly drag and dropped into the OS font system >as a side-effect of supplying this metadata. I think so. >Checking the information is okay, it depends what UAs are required by >a W3C Rec to do with it; are they required to use the machine-readable >licensing information to _assist_ people and display that information, >or to _manage_ people and enforce restrictions? Wait, doesn't CORS enforce restrictions? Does that make CORS DRM? >> look about the same. Trying to carry licensing information to instruct >> proper usage is like putting up signs saying whether the water is >> potable or not - it doesn't stop people from drinking it, but it does >> encourage doing the right thing. > >Here you seem to be talking about assisting people and not expecting >UAs to enforce restrictions. Hmm. I think we think of "enforcing restrictions" differently. I WOULD expect UAs not to allow usage (say, non-allowed-domain usage) to work. I would not expect that it is fantastically difficult, for a so-minded unscrupulous individual, to go remove those restrictions (illegally (=outside of license allowance)). Trying to put up an impregnable fortress is one thing, putting a railing around a cliff is another. >P.S. Thanks for a thoughtful discussion, I'm enjoying this :-) As am I. But unfortunately I will need to drop from this conversation somewhat for a couple of days; I'm travelling (to @media2009) and will be offline. I'll pick back up when I get back on line. -Chris
Received on Tuesday, 23 June 2009 21:02:15 UTC