> From: Brad Thompson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> How do we know it is really you saying that, and not your > fyunch(click)? My "Niven Fan" credentials are impeccable. I named my child "Teela". > The interesting point is that Agfa Monotype > refers to its digital typefaces as 'font software' Adobe does too. Both companies had to start that back in the early 90's when various font manipulation tools (mostly "Font Monger") created a whole community of people who started "swapping fonts" (shades of Napster). They had to focus on the code itself, in order to make the claim that the Font Monger'd fonts were derivative works and subject to the foundary's copyright claims. In the real sense of things, they're exactly correct about what they sell too; fonts are just specialized pieces of code. If you open up a font file, you don't find a bunch of letters, you find the instructions for rendering those letters. > They > argue that software designed to reverse-engineer such font > software is a > violation of their copyright. Specifically, they argue that software that allows users to embed one of their fonts in another document is a DCMA infringement, because the "bit" in the font file that indicates that it can be ebedded per various rendering specs is always turned off by default in commercial fonts, but there are utlilities to flip it "on". The font foundaries claim this bit should be considered "copy protection technology", and circumventing it violates the DCMA's prohibitions against circumventing such technology. Embedding the font in the file means that I can essentially give you a copy of the font when I exchange a file with you, so you don't have to buy the font file in order to correctly render the document. The font foundaries consider this a potential loss of revenue. The interesting part of this case is that the Foundaries are going after the makers of the software that can flip the bit - even though ebeddable fonts are a public spec, there are thousands of public domain fonts available, and the person who wrote the program mostly uses it to make his own fonts embeddable. This is an excellent example of why this provision of the DCMA should be overturned as unconstitutional, because it can be used to supress completely legitimate uses of a technology because that technology >might< be contributing to a copyright infringement. The big media companies lost the Betamax case on this exact point - Betamax was found to have more legitimate uses than illegitimate uses and the courts refused to restrict it's technology because it >might< be used inappropriately. (Napster on the other hand, was shown to be used almost exclusively for copyright infringement and couldn't pass this test). We now return you to your regularly scheduled Open Gaming discussions! Ryan _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
