RE: New work on fonts at W3C

On Thursday, June 25, 2009 2:19 PM Brad Kemper wrote:
> 
> On Jun 25, 2009, at 10:28 AM, "Levantovsky, Vladimir" wrote:
> 
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Brad Kemper [mailto:brad.kemper@gmail.com]
> >>
> >> So you would allow your fonts to be served in their raw format if
> >> referrer based blocking was used? It could provide a large amount
of
> >> license violation, even if it wasn't perfect.
> >
> > This particular discussion had nothing to do with raw font format,
it
> > was relevant to discussing possible ways to subset EOT. And you lost
> > me
> > completely when you mention "a large amount of license violation",
> Can
> > you please elaborate further?
> 
> >
> 
> Sure. I believe one of your objections to using raw formats was that
> it would allow cross linking if other browsers did not enforce same-
> origin restrictions on them. I know you had other objections too, but
> on this point, given you link go other means of restricting cross-
> origin linking (such as referrer), would that satisy that particular
> objection to raw format distribution of fonts, if these other
> (admittedly imperfect) means were employed?
> 
> By "large amount of licence violation" (I meant to say "prevent" it,
> not "provide" it), I mean that if a Web site employed a mechanism that
> only let the font be served based on the referrer value being
> acceptable (i.e. only coming from licensed sites or staging servers or
> maybe even from Google Cache, etc.), that this would go a long way
> toward preventing mindless linking to fonts from people at other sites
> that did not understand the licence restrictions.

Yes, I think this would be an acceptable solution, especially because if
you, as an author, licensed a font from a font foundry - both you and
the foundry would be "in the same boat" on this. Font foundry wants
their IP be protected from misuse (hot linking), while you, as a
licensee, want to protect that IP to satisfy your license conditions.

However, this has nothing to do with using a particular data format, and
can be used with any font, be it raw or EOT with empty root string. And,
this mechanism would not address the other concerns relevant to raw font
use. If I get a URL that looks like
http://your_domain/fonts/coolfont.ttf - I can click on it and "Save file
as" dialog would pop up - the referrer value wouldn't prevent it. Raw
fonts can be saved directly to my "Fonts" folder - this is why font
foundries don't want to allow raw font use.

Regards,
Vladimir

Received on Thursday, 25 June 2009 19:25:43 UTC