the permission table he is talking about sounds like the copy-prevention bit in PDFs. it's up to the reader software to enforce it, and since PDF is mostly an "open" specification, many free readers simply ignore it or allow the user to override it.
but how are fonts any different than stock images? a designer/photographer creates a work, then licenses it to end users that are entitled to use it. if you have a license to a stock image, you can use it on your website. i can copy it and use it on my site, but that would be illegal. how is this different than fonts? if you have a license to use a font, use it. i can copy it and use it on my site, but that would be illegal.
sites using stock images illegally are often sued or fined and there are a number of companies that offer services to find these illegally used images, even ones that have been resized or altered.
with fonts it seems like it would be even easier to automate the process of crawling websites looking for a particular font file and checking the licensing of it, especially since the font files wouldn't be altered.
It's doubly tricky with fonts because typefaces have a complicated legal status. Typeface designs cannot be copyrighted, though individual implementations (i.e. ttf files) can be. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typeface#Legal_aspects
The question you want to be asking is if it will help anyone. The response to yours is yes, thousands of people. Google for anti-copyright for readings.
I'm familiar with the anti-copyright arguments, but my point was that it seems inconsistent to have copyright on so many types of creative works except typefaces.
So what happens when some big corporation has managed to lawyer their way to copyright over pretty much all basic font designs, and anything remotely sensible is close enough to be considered a derivative work? Now no-one can use writing to communicate. There is no sane universe in which a tax on writing is in the interests of society.
Font files, as in the programs that describe the shape of a font in vector or bitmap terms, are already copyrightable, but I think the US gets this one absolutely right by specifically excluding font designs from being monopolised.
If you're so cynical that you think someone could successfully claim copyright over stuff that's hundreds of years old, I think it's pointless to argue with you.
There are musical works that have been under copyright for longer than the average human lifetime. In most places, singing "Happy Birthday" to a child in the street is an infringement of copyright. Amazon successfully patented "one click". Other people have patented inventions that contradict the laws of physics as we know them. Mike Rowe got harassed by one of the largest and most recognisable brands in the world for making a joke out of the similarity between his name and theirs.
If you're so deluded as to think that common sense always works in the area of intellectual property law, I think it's pointless to argue with you.
Fonts are very different from stock images. They provide texture, not content: nobody goes to a web page to read 'Lorem Ipsum' written in an attractive font. I'd say a font is similar to the film stock on which a photo is shot. There are lots of cool and distinctive film stocks out there...but Kodak doesn't collect any royalties on the tasty silver halide look of an Ansel Adams photo.
Because the foundries are being included in a standards debate in which their own short-term interests are retarding long-term progress for everybody, and the implementors are working around that retardation in ways that are going to be disruptive for the foundries.
It's Christiansen all over again. We'll get dynamic fonts. They'll be crappy at first, because Adobe and Monotype (and FontFont and HFJ) aren't going to play ball. But there are enough hungry indies out there that we'll start getting good dynamic web fonts, and those will take over the world and screw Monotype.
Some font foundries won't sell you a Web license at any cost, and other foundries merely charge you an extortionate amount for a Web license. It's a cultural problem.
You can take the font from a web page, use it in Illustrator for printed material (still the bread and butter of foundries), stretch it just a bit so that its no longer in exactly the same proportions, and it becomes very hard to prove where the font came from.
I suspect the fear is not so much fonts being used on webpages, but fonts getting "out there" in general. I agree, though: probably an unfounded fear.
You are clearly not a graphic designer. Altering typeface proportions is the biggest no-no and the first sign of an amateur design botch-job. Just an FYI :-)
First, how do you take a bitmap from a web page, pull it into a vector program, and resize it without redrawing the entire font?
Second, I think you'd be surprised by how good trained designers are at spotting typefaces. "Stretch out" Helvetica a bit, and a trained eye is going to know you just mutilated Helvetica.
No, the whole thing we're talking about here is embedding the font files in the webpage so that we can finally use whatever font we want as a typeface.
I have no doubt that a trained typographer can identify fonts at 100 paces in a hurricane, but if he sees his font in printed material, contacts the publisher and says "That's my font" and the publisher says "No it's not" what is his recourse? He'd have to get some kind of order to search the publisher, or otherwise demand that the publisher prove that its a different font. How do you convince a judge that two fonts are the same, without superimposing them? Does "Look at the serifs!" hold up? I'm not saying that its impossible to prove the origin of a font, just that it gets a lot harder once you leave the digital world.
but how are fonts any different than stock images? a designer/photographer creates a work, then licenses it to end users that are entitled to use it. if you have a license to a stock image, you can use it on your website. i can copy it and use it on my site, but that would be illegal. how is this different than fonts? if you have a license to use a font, use it. i can copy it and use it on my site, but that would be illegal.
sites using stock images illegally are often sued or fined and there are a number of companies that offer services to find these illegally used images, even ones that have been resized or altered.
with fonts it seems like it would be even easier to automate the process of crawling websites looking for a particular font file and checking the licensing of it, especially since the font files wouldn't be altered.