"Language Analysis Systems, Inc." writes > I'm not sure whether we're witnessing a customer-unfriendly change in > the business model (hardly the only one the computer industry has > foisted on us) or merely a transitional period while technologies are > still being developed. For my part, I'd like to see SVG fill this gap. > > The point is that while it shouldn't be Microsoft's job to solve > everybody's problems, it also shouldn't be the average Joe's problem to > solve them all himself.
I agree with most of what you say, except that we are not exposing the problem faced by readers (yes they could buy a license to use thes fonts, but they will always think it should be for the documents they create themselves, not for the documents created by others they receive). So the main problem is for authors: they are not satisfied on relying on customers to have bought a separate license to read the document they sell: this limits the business of authors, in a way that did not exist the same authors chose to publish printed versions of their documents. So there's an urgent need for authors to get solutions. It's up to font designers to provide a texhnical solution that allows them to license their font designs to authors once, and give these authors the freedom to sell or broadcast the documents they create with them. That's why I think that font design providers (Adobe, Agfa MonoType, ...) should agree on a common format to allow authors to distribute freely the documents they create with these font designs. Then it's up to them to cooperate with operating system vendors so that these OS will be able to embed licensed fonts in documents, by managing two font stores in the OS: one for reusable licensed fonts that can be used and selected to create documents, one that get used as embeddable fonts (containing a signed copy of the license) when these documents are exported for publishing: the embedded fonts in the document then contain a signature of the license used by authors, and this signature cannot be removed from embedded fonts, nor detached from the document to create another document, without making the embedded font undecypherable/unusable. One way to achieve this is to only allow embedding of embeddable fonts within unmodifiable documents. This means a "export for publication" function in word processors, which should be the only way to create first a unmodifiable and signed document content, in which embedded fonts will be imported using the unmodifiable document content signature to encrypt the embedded font which will be attached to the document. The way these embeddable encrypted fonts are effectively attached to the signed document needs some other standard, but any composite document model could be used (including the standard RFC822 MIME multipart format used in Emails or in the .MHT file format for web archives). The document will still be modifiable, but this will require dropping the document content signature as well as the encrypted embedded font. Users that receive these documents and have a license for the referenced fonts can then work on it, and sign it agains with their own license. If the referenced fonts have no local license, it will be impossible to reuse the embedded tont design, and the user modifying the document will have to use another font and possibly alter the document style to work on it. But the same user will still be able to read it with the original design if the document is not altered. The difficulty is that each document will need its unalterable signature, and will need to embed a separate copy of the encrypted embedded font (this embedded font is not usable across multiple documents from the same author). The alternative on this could be that the documents could use a signature exposing the identity certificate of the author, and the OS could allow a encrypted embedded font to be used on all documents from that author by deciphering the document content with the key contained in a embedded font distributed separately. But this last solution would leave a security hole if a document can be created that matches the key of a separately embedded font: if it is not cryptographically strongly difficult to create such a document whose content would match the font key, the encrypted font could be reused. So the way to avoid it is to use very strong and quite long font keys. As the document will still need to reference that font key, the author of that modified or new document will need to steal an identity of another author to sign his modified document and expose that signature. This creates a vicious loop. That's why I think there's no way to embed fonts loaded separately from the document, and each published document wishing to use a licensed font design will need to embed that font design completely with their own encrypted version of that font, even if its the same one as in other documents from the same author. So encrypted embedded fonts should better have the force of a author signature, for the content using that embedded font. The best way to limit issues is to allow these encrypted embedded fonts to be viewed directly with a OS tool along with the clear-text details of the author contained in the signature certificate, in a way that says: "this signed embedded font is a version of the ABC-DEF font created by Typographer ABC is usable by documents created by XYZ, who has a valid license for using this font in the document authored by XYZ; this means that any document referencing this signed embedded font must be considered to be signed by XYZ and all the intellectual rights attached to the documents are specified by XYZ; if you think that the document you receive was not created by XYZ, you can first check <here> if the document structure and content is valid according to XYZ's control. If, not, then the distribution of this document to you is illegal, as it is both a breach in the font license by the real author of documents using this stolen font, or it may be an identity theft; if you think this is not the case, then you must first ask to XYZ to provide you the unencrypted font if he has the right to do so, or you must destroy the document using it unless you get a valid license for the font design ABC-DEF created by typographer ABC." __________________________________________________________________ << ella for Spam Control >> has removed Spam messages and set aside Newsletters for me You can use it too - and it's FREE! http://www.ellaforspam.com
<<attachment: winmail.dat>>
