LWN.net News from the source
TrueType fonts include a couple of bits stating whether the font may be embedded in documents or not. Tweaking these bits has been taken, by font companies, as "circumvention" in the past, and the DMCA invoked in attempts to shut down distribution of useful tools. See, for example, the history of the dispute regarding the simple "embed" program. In the case of embed, the program's author has resisted, and the program is still available on the net.
It turns out now, however, that Adobe's Acrobat software is capable of ignoring the "do not embed" bits at times. Adobe claims that things work this way because the company has secured a contractual right to distribute the fonts in question within PDF documents. Font producers ITC and Agfa Monotype disagree, and have invoked the DMCA. Acrobat, it seems, is a circumvention device.
Adobe has taken the offensive and gone to court to secure its rights to the fonts and to be freed of the DMCA charges. The company could have an interesting battle on its hands, however. Adobe may well be within its rights when it claims that embedding of the fonts is legal. But the DMCA makes no exceptions for "circumvention" which enables the exercise of existing rights. Adobe has no sympathy for those wanting to use Elcomsoft's eBook processor to exercise their fair use rights against electronic books. There is no reason to believe that Acrobat should be treated differently.
There is a certain sense of poetic justice in watching Adobe take this fall. But the use of laws like the DMCA to prevent legitimate activities is wrong, no matter who the victim is. Every one of these actions makes us all a little less free. It appears that Adobe's rights (and those of its customers) are being violated here; we should be just as willing to challenge the excesses of the DMCA in this case as in others.
Palladium, they say, is just a way to protect users from rogue software - no DRM stuff there, honest.
Lucky, however, is apparently a little more creative in this regard; thus he has announced:
As Lucky points out, there is no way that the Microsoft Palladium team could be unaware of any prior art with regard to his patent filing; their public statement that no such art exists must thus be true. The patent might just be granted.
One assumes that the licensing terms for such a patent might be other than favorable. One could even imagine that, in a fantastic scenario, this patent could end Palladium's usefulness as a platform for DRM systems. Of course, that scenario does require a great deal of fantasy about one's ability to stand up to the industry's lawyers.
Many of us worry a great deal about the use of software patents to gain a lock on the many worthwhile things that can be done with computers. The offensive use of patents in an attempt to shut down things that somebody thinks should not be done with computers is a rather different way of doing things. It is an approach that carries a number of risks: legal expenses, for example, not to mention the lack of any sort of consensus on what techniques, if any, should be blocked in this manner. Of course, with enough fantasy, one can envision another outcome from use use of blocking patents: a wider realization of the damage caused by software patents and a reform of software patent law. One can always hope.
(Thanks to NTK, which always beats us to the really good stuff.)
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