The two-edged nature of the DMCA [LWN.net]

The two-edged nature of the DMCA

Posted Sep 5, 2002 8:30 UTC (Thu) by beejaybee (guest, #1581)
Parent article: The two-edged nature of the DMCA

As Nelson would say, "Ha har"!

Seriously, though, there are a couple of issues here:

(1) if a font says "do not embed" and someone embeds that font in a PDF document, then (a) Acrobat _is_ a circumvention device, also (b) whoever caused the font to be embedded is in breach of the license under which they obtained the font;

(2) there is no point in PDF as a "de facto standard" if it is not possible for everyone receiving a PDF file to be able to display it properly.

The obvious course of action here is for Adobe to modify Acrobat so that it honours the "do not embed" tag, and for everyone to call off the lawyers.

The losers here will be the font authors. If they persist in use of the "do not embed" tag, their proprietary products will fall into disuse. I don't see that causing us consumers, nor Adobe, any loss of sleep.

DMCA here is neutral. It's a _bad_ case for us to spend resources on, except in so far as it points out just how ridiculous it is as a piece of legislation.

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The two-edged nature of the DMCA

Posted Sep 5, 2002 22:11 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

>if a font says "do not embed" and someone embeds that font in a PDF >document, then (a) Acrobat _is_ a circumvention device

What if a separate contract says, "no, go ahead and embed"? My understanding of the case (which is based entirely on this LWN article) is that is Adobe's argument. Seems reasonable to me that if Acrobat ignores the embed bits only on fonts where the font author has separately given the user permission to embed, there's no copyright being circumvented.

I believe in this case there is a dispute as to whether that permission exists, but that's a completely uninteresting question from a DMCA point of view.

The two-edged nature of the DMCA

Posted Sep 6, 2002 9:51 UTC (Fri) by beejaybee (guest, #1581) [Link]

> What if a separate contract says, "no, go ahead and embed"?

There are serious (non-DMCA-related) issues here. If you have that contract then you should have a _private_ (not released to the public) tool to enable you to do the job. Also, if you allow your font to be embedded in a file which users can download, surely you're giving your IP away ... Joe Public can extract the font info from the PDF file with an ordinary text editor, flip the "don't embed" bits & make free with it, without having to execute a copy of the alleged circumvention device "Acrobat", or anything else with any connection to its author.

This sort of proves that DMCA is irrelevant to this particular case, unless posession of a simple text editor (or development tools sufficient to create one) is to be regarded as posession of a circumvention tool - which makes us all criminals & proves just how ridiculous DMCA is.

Once again - the problem with copyright violation is in the mind of the person who sets out to make illegal copies of copyright material, not in any technology used to do the actual copying. This is the principle that should be enshrined in law; it would strike down the stupid clauses which form the objectionable parts of the DMCA, and end all the arguments relating to RIAA vs music sharing services, etc, etc.

The two-edged nature of the DMCA

Posted Sep 15, 2002 16:44 UTC (Sun) by Musicman (guest, #3688) [Link]

there is another piece of ridicule here: while a majority of freeware developers only support truetype, most fonts from ITC, Agfa and Monotype are available in postscript and truetype variants (with some discussion about which format is better).
It should be interesting to the judge in such a case that the postscript format simply does not support an embedding control - the use of the font file is entirely controlled by a standard license agreement.
So the mere act of checking the PS rather than TT box on the order form could be interpreted as circumventing ... will DMCA invalidate order forms then?