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Font Company Wielding DMCA Against Bit-Flipping
Roundeye writes: "Seems that AGFA Monotype is trying to stop Tom Murphy from distributing his embed tool. According to the lawyers, the pair of bits in a TrueType font which specify how a font should be embedded constitute a DMCA-worthy access control device. Tom's standing up to them because, 'Embedding bits do nothing to keep consumers from copying fonts' and 'Since the enactment of the DMCA, I have only ever run embed on fonts for which I own the copyright." He's even got his own haiku version of the software..."
This raises a great point about the DCMA. If I have a company that produces a tool to help me create products I am ok. Now, if my tool is used by others to circumvent what they call protection am I liable?
2 .h tm
In this case preventing someone from embedding a font doesn't protect the font. The font can easily be included with the document. This is nuts.
The embedding bits were orginally designed to make things easier for people to *distribute* fonts, not impede the distribution.
Check out this from Microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/embed/embed
The best quote:
"Most foundries and type designers set the embedding level of their fonts to Editable embedding allowed or Print & Preview embedding allowed. However, a few foundries set the embedding level to No embedding allowed. If you feel that embedding technology has a place within your organization, be sure to ask the type vendor about it before you part with any money."
Anyway, in case you're curious, I've been pushing their buttons a little bit, with the help of Dave Touretzky , and my current guess is that they have given up on me. (I haven't heard back since the letter I sent them that's on that page.) But I will be happy to go to court over this retarded case, and the EFF has informally offered to help if I do. ( Donate! )
In case you're interested, my fonts, which I've been making since 1993 (and which are free for you to use for practically anything) are at fonts.tom7.com .
You obviously don't work in the design field do you?
Fonts aren't "freely distributed" in most cases. Fonts usually do accompany a piece sent to the printer to ensure the printer can reproduce the typeface in the design. But the printer must remove the fonts from their system if they do not have rights to them. Fonts you see in print are nearly always copyrighted due to the demanding nature of making a good, legible and proper typeface.
Check out this book.
Did you read my response?
In order for embed to be covered by the DMCA, the program has to be primarily designed for circumvention. Circumvention only occurs when the act is without the authority of the copyright holder. In this case, I am the copyright holder, so of course I grant myself authority to modify the bits!
(There are several other reasons why their argument doesn't hold that I give, but this is the strongest...) I think their legal argument is faulty.
I searched the copyright office's web site for "fonts" and stumbled across this letter:
p df
http://www.loc.gov/copyright/1201/comments/004.
It's a comment submitted by Aladdin Enterprises (the makers of ghostscript) during the Copyright Office's review of the DMCA two years ago. It addresses almost exactly the current situation:
"...There is, in fact, a commercially important situation where this is currently the case. A software package called Fontographer is used very widely for creating TrueType font files. A bug in Fontographer causes it to improperly mark the fonts it produces in a way that causes certain other widely used software packages to consider that the font may not be embedded in documents that use the font. This incorrect marking happens by default, contrary to the wishes of the font author. The authors of Fontographer have been unresponsive to users and authors and have not fixed this problem. Thus a situation has been created where the author of the font wishes to allow users to embed it, but users who remove the protection marking (which is extremely simple technically -- it involves changing one easily-located bit in the font) will be in violation of the law."