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This is at least partially a reaction to the Linux community's tricks to get fonts. Some people in the Linux community wrote a program to automatically download
by briansmith 17y ago
This is at least partially a reaction to the Linux community's tricks to get fonts. Some people in the Linux community wrote a program to automatically download and install Microsoft's TrueType Font Collection fonts after installation. That way, Linux can use all the fonts that Microsoft spent millions of dollars designing, Linux itself isn't affected by the fonts' license, nobody in the Linux community has to spend resources to design decent fonts, and the user isn't hassled much.
All the font foundries saw that and said "we will never allow that to happen again"--especially since the intersection between their customers and Linux users is nearly the empty set. Their proposed solution is to allow embedding only if the font files on the servers are covered by the DMCA. That is why there is a trivial obsfucation of the font information in the EOT specification. If somebody distributes a program to scrape a bunch of fonts of the web and install them onto a person's computer, they can use the DMCA to take the program down (just as the movie industry did with DeCSS). It isn't 100% effective, but it does help prevent casual piracy. The copy-protection bits of EOT are a lost cause in the long run. But, they will be somewhat effective in the short run. That is just like DeCSS--the first couple of years, it was difficult for an inexperienced user to find a trustworthy DeCSS program with a usable interface.
I support EOT because Microsoft already made it the de-facto standard in 1997, and Microsoft already said they won't implement TTF linking in IE. That means that if other browsers don't implement EOT, we will always have the hassle of having separate font files for IE and other browsers. That is silly. It is the other browsers' fault that they have been so lethargic to implement font linking. Now, 12 years later they finally implement it, but in an incompatible way. Then they turn around and blame Microsoft for having a 12-year-old implementation that is incompatible with their nubile mechanism. Who wins at that game? Only people who value smugness over productivity.
- jbert 17y ago> This is at least partially a reaction to the Linux community's tricks to get fonts. Some people in the Linux community wrote a program to automatically download and install Microsoft's TrueType Font Collection fonts after installation. This is true, but perhaps misleading since it misses an important point. The font downloader is legal according to the licensing terms: http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web#cite_note-1 http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web#c... Even if there were super-effective bits embedded in the font which magically enforced the licensing terms it would still have been allowed.
- briansmith 17y agoCorrect. I'm not saying the Linux people did anything illegal or wrong since Microsoft donated those fonts to the web community.
- ZeroGravitas 17y agoDeCSS didn't help prevent casual piracy. It helped prevent people from legally watching DVDs they had bought on linux because they wouldn't license it, and it was illegal to reverse engineer it. So what did all those tech savvy people who were being actively snubbed by the movie industry do? They bittorrented pre-ripped movie files instead of buying DVDs that were somewhere between awkward and impossible to use. Another classic foot-shooting move from the movie industry.
- briansmith 17y agoCSS did help prevent casual piracy. Before DeCSS was released, it was very effective. Immediately after DeCSS was released, it was still pretty inconvenient to pirate a DVD, even for somebody that knew what to look for. Even now most people wouldn't be able to rip a DVD. CSS doesn't have anything to do with the popularity of bittorrent. CDs (which have no DRM) are extremely popular on bittorrent as well. Also, you should blame your Linux vendor for making it hard to watch DVDs. I have used many Linux-based products that have licensed CSS and have built-in DVD support from the start. Windows and Mac OS X also have no problem with DVDs. If your vendor isn't giving you DVD support then switch to a different vendor.
- hippie 17y agois that brian smith from belfast?