Web Open Font Format backed by Mozilla, type foundries (ars technica) [LWN.net]

Web Open Font Format backed by Mozilla, type foundries (ars technica)

Posted Nov 3, 2009 17:12 UTC (Tue) by farnz (guest, #17727)
In reply to: Web Open Font Format backed by Mozilla, type foundries (ars technica) by foom
Parent article: Web Open Font Format backed by Mozilla, type foundries (ars technica)

Just expanding a little on your last paragraph, since this is something that's easy to forget in discussions of DRM.

There are two distinct classes of "infringers" (defined for the purposes of this post as people doing things the copyright holder doesn't want them to) that DRM is supposed to tackle:

Accidental infringers, who don't realise that they're doing something they're not supposed to. WOFF is plenty good enough to protect against these people, even if a WOFF to real font tool is freely available.
Deliberate infringers, who know that they're doing something they're not supposed to, but feel justified in doing it anyway.

Examples of the first group include the secretary who grabs a font they needs from the company website; if it wasn't available that way, they'd go through authorized routes to buy a font licence, or someone who uses a personal CD for the company promotional video.

Examples of the second group include not just the obvious pirates, but someone who takes an extract from a movie for teaching purposes, someone who bypasses software activation on something they bought, or someone who rips a movie from DVD to their hard disc in order to watch it on the plane without eating their laptop battery.

It's well understood in the techie community (albeit not in management) that all DRM can do is prevent the first group from infringing. Because the second group is doing it deliberately, they'll eventually find a way around the DRM; given this, there is no point making bypassing the DRM hard, as group 1 will discover that they're about to do something they shouldn't, and either obey, or make the decision that they wish to become part of group 2. Group 2 will actively try to bypass your DRM - if you make it easy to bypass it, there's a good chance that they'll leave it in place, where group 1 will face it.

On that note, the best DRM scheme I've ever seen was by a small software house, now sadly bought out by a bigger company. Their product used a network licensing scheme, and if the licence server didn't give you a licence for any reason, you were asked to type in "I know I do not have a license right now" before the program would start. On the few occasions I saw pirate copies, the DRM was still in there; given how easy it was to bypass, no-one had seen fit to remove it. And legitimate customers were rarely affected by the DRM - it didn't fail that often, when it did, you just entered the magic phrase, and phoned IT to tell them to sort it.

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