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Adobe Gets Hit By DMCA
Reeses writes "Adobe has asked a U.S. District court to allow them to embed ITC and Monotpye fonts in their documents, claiming "Adobe has asked the court to declare that Adobe's popular Acrobat product does not violate certain provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) as claimed by ITC and Agfa Monotype." Which is interesting after the Skylarov/Elcomsoft debacle from a year or so ago. I guess they figured that it didn't apply to them since they enforced it."
Comes around to byte 'em in the ass.
But on another note, how would this affect other Adobe products, like building a web page in Photoshop using these fonts and publishing?
It will show that poorly written laws with big teeth are dangerous to everyone, whether they are consumers, the non-consuming public, industry, or the politicians who support them.
Cross your fingers, maybe this is the beginning of the end for the DMCA.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
Arent these the same companies going after the CMU student for his embed tool?
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
first reaction: [in wise-man voice] what goes around comes around... yeah...
second reaction: so THAT's what a critical mass of dumbasses can do...
and then it dawned on me: so the legends of "lawyers with head in ass" is really true after all...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Remember that Adobe is not fighting the DMCA. They are merely trying to bribe^h^h^h^h^hconvince a judge into saying that their actions are not a violation of the DMCA as has been alleged by other companies. This can have a couple possible outcomes. (IANALBTW)
1. Adobe is sucessful in getting a judge to declare they are not violating the DMCA. This has bad and good reprocussions. The DMCA is strengthened by case law, but what Adobe gets off for, everyone else does as well.
2. Adobe is not sucessful in getting a judge to decalre they are not violating the DMCA. This is initially bad, because the DMCA remains as strong as it was and the restrictions it imposes are stengthened by case law. In the long run, however, Adobe, one of the few non-Media oriented companies that has the most to gain from the DMCA is forced to lobby against it and fight it in court, possibly having longer lasting influence.
The lesson we should learn from all this is that if a law requires a trial just to see if it applies to any certain case, it's probably not a good law and won't be applied fairly.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
This case brings up an interesting proposition, and may hint at future threats to the DMCA. If a law is so draconian and restrictive, then eventually it can come around and bite the ass of the people originally supporting it. The same could be said for Bermans 'right to hack' bill, if it some how survives constitutional muster, then it could allow anyone (you and me) to hack the RIAA, MPAA back, looking for any copyrighted works we have created - art, digital home photos and movies, etc.
The first thing to do is copyright every digital work you have and then sue any company that modifies it without your permission - which apparently every software program out there will modify your creation on some level. I'm not a software engineer, so I don't know all the intricacies.
www.enthea.org
Free Market ueber Alles types should take note ... this is the kind of karmic returns such ill-considered, anti-social behavior in the name of padding stockholders pockets at the expense of the public good warrent, and perhaps now a little more often will actually receive.
Hell, that's what we've been arguing all these years. What comes around in the market will go around in the market.
Unfortunately, as others have pointed out, since this isn't the Free Market but the Unfree Government enforcing laws at the point of a gun and demanding bribes^Wdonations in return for protection, those with protection money will get away scott free and you and I will be under their thumb.
If only the market were involved...
The fact that it is inconvenient to your argument to admit that the DMCA is an act of government does not make it a "social convention".
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
It's a common thing that when sending files to a service bureau for ripping, that you give the service bureau your fonts, or you make sure they are *embedded* in your postscript output. I have never heard that this is considered *copyright infringement*.
Actually, that's illegal.
Your serice bureau is expected to be a licensee of whatever fonts it is required to output.
That's for font files themselves. Anything converted to mere outlines (aka, Illustrator's Convert to Path command) doesn't count as a font file (because it's not).
It's the font file that is copyrighted, and considered as program code. So, as such, font files get as much protection as a program (eg, Illustrator).
A few years ago, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police thought fashionable to crack down on service bureau. I worked in one of them back then, and we got searched heavilly. They only found a couple of font files that clients had sent on their disks, but we were able to proved we didn't asked nor required them.
The risk that a corporation takes if it breaks a law is much smaller than the risk an actual flesh and blood person takes for doing the very same thing. It's gotten to the point where corporations typically view legal problems as just another operating expense, like paying the electric bill.
I want to see PERSONAL responsibility brought back into the justice system. If a high-level manager makes a decision that amounts to committing a crime, don't drag the company to court - drag HIM to court. If people knew that the things they do at work are things they will be held responsible for, they'd be a lot less willing to do things they know are wrong.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
It's possible to extract the raw font glyphs from a PDF (convert to PS with acrobat reader). You would have to painstakingly reconstruct the font from the data and you can't get any meta-information from the original font for things like kerning, hinting, baselines, etc. PDFs usually only include those glyphs that are actually used in the document so you might not be able to reconstruct the entire font from a single PDF.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
you don't get anything when you spend money to pay your taxes.
So having roads to travel on, schools for your children, and armed forces to defend your nation count as nothing?
Copyrights are (in general) good, because they cause more money to be spent more times.
You're saying copyright is good because it will cause people to spend money. That may make sense if people would not otherwise spend that money. In reality, if people could acquire copyrighted content for free, they would spend their money on something else. Furthermore, without copyright, anyone who wants the content could get it; whereas with copyright, only those willing to spend the demanded fee will obtain the content. Thus copyright holds back the distribution of wealth (content).
You argue that copyright is good because it encourages people to spend money. Your argument is flawed. Spending money is only good in that it can encourage the creation of wealth. When you buy a sandwich at McDonalds, you pay McDonalds to serve you a quick, convenient meal, so wealth has been created. McDonalds pays someone to process your order (which is really just overhead), someone to make your sandwich, and a farmer to grow the food. In each case (except for the overhead), McDonalds pays for the creation of wealth.
As another example, suppose I sell my car to a high school student. The student can't afford a new car, so she won't pay anyone to create a car for her. I can't afford a new car, so I won't pay anyone to create one. However, since I gave up my car in return for money, the student has acquired wealth, and I have enough money to buy a new car, thus creating wealth.
Copyright increases wealth only insomuch as it encourages the creation of wealth (content). Without copyright, artists would presumably not bother creating content and no one would get anything. If copyright lasts longer than is necessary, it prohibits people from acquiring wealth, and allows the publisher to collect money for doing nothing.
Spending money for nothing is pointless. It allows some people to collect money for doing nothing, when they should be out creating wealth.
You're right that exchange of money in our economy is accompanied by a net increase in wealth. This increase, however, is not due to the exchange of money.
The increase in wealth is due to the exchange of goods (both tangible and intangible). An exchange of money usually accompanies the exchange of goods, but this is tangential to the increase in society's net wealth.
That's why the GPL works; even though no money is exchanged, a large amount of wealth is created by the exchange of property.
Also, AFAIK there's no way to extract a font from a PDF.
Actually, it is quite easy if you know how to parse the PDF file format.
I recently wrote a PDF parser and viewer, and I have some test/debug code in the program that dumps each font on a page to a separate file.
If I place any of these font files in my Windows font folder, I can use them in any other program.
I'm not aware, however, of any programs written with the explicit purpose of extracting fonts.
"Scientists prove we were never here."
-- Devo