Fonts and the rights to use them are another example of how digital rights management affects our world. Fonts on a computer are considered code or intellectual property, and are governed by license agreements. Your operating system (Mac, Linux, Windows, etc.) will include a certain number of licensed fonts. Without fonts words on your computer screen wouldn't look like much. This has in some ways restricted web designers and developers to using what are commonly referred to as web safe fonts. 

Though web designers are getting more tools to address the font issue the licensing issues complicate the utility of this technique. Developers now have the ability to include font sets in html code so that you can help the browser see the font you want it to see. On the surface a great idea! However, as with anything digital, this tool comes with licensing considerations.  

Theoretically, you (or the site visitor) are required to pay for that font you've embedded. Practically, there isn't really a system in place to manage payments for usage rights–for now. Dave Shea has an interesting post on this topic. He advocates that designers begin using this technique using fonts that are either free of paying for their use if it's warranted.

As one comment on Dave's post confirms – if you do not have an installed version of the embedded font on your system you can't copy the page content, which is an obvious flaw and drawback of embedding.

Another consideration is how embedded fonts affect page load performance. If you use a great many embedded fonts users would have to wait for the browser to download the font before they would be able to see the page content they are viewing. This might not be a big deal if you're on broadband, but slower connections would experience slower page load times.

So, there you have it—a quick look at fonts and web design and why sticking with web safe fonts, for now, may be the best course.