Microsoft's forgotten monopoly

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Some observations about fonts on the web: Hakon Lie writes that with his proposal 'font designers will find an outlet for their creativity' and that fears of piracy are unfounded because 'TrueType fonts carry with them information about permissible use'.

I am a type designer and font software developer, and am also vice-president of the Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI). As such I have a professional interest in Mr Lie's ideas. And it is a *professional* interest: I don't design typefaces to express my creativity, I design them to meet my client's needs and to earn a living. Yes, as Mr Lie observes, there are very large numbers of free fonts available on the Internet, and most of them are not of very good quality, either in terms of design or software engineering. But more to the point, companies such as those for whom I design custom typefaces do not want to use some random freeware font for their corporate website: they want to use *their* fonts, and they also want to ensure that their investment in those fonts is protected against piracy and unauthorised use.

This leads me to my second observation. Mr Lie is, perhaps from ignorance, glossing over the problems of font protection by stating that 'TrueType fonts carry with them information about permissible use'. What TrueType and OpenType format fonts actually contain is an embedding bit that indicates permissions for a relatively crude range of options: no embedding, print and preview embedding, editable embedding, and installable embedding. This embedding bit was designed around embedding full or subsetted font files within documents, not serving fonts over the Internet. There is nothing like digital rights management for fonts, despite lobbying for such from many font developers.

I think blaming Microsoft for giving away some of the highest quality fonts every made is silly, but I am in agreement with Mr Lie that there should be greater typographic diversity on the Internet, and that some reliable and secure web font technology is very desirable. But the security issue should not be glossed over: it should be examined seriously and a real digital rights management system proposed.

Finally, I will note that Ray Larabie, to whom Mr Lie refers, makes both free fonts and commercial fonts, the latter licensed through his company Typodermic. A web font technology should not presume on the existence of free fonts, but should be robust and secure enough that Ray's free and commercial fonts are both useable within it, with appropriate levels of usage permissions.; Posted by: John Hudson Posted on: 06/19/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use