When trying to embed some fonts, the log gives:

"<font name>" does not allow font embedding.

And Prince refuses to embed the font. Although it is nice to be aware that such a bit is set in a font, this is a non-feature. Other applications (such as OpenOffice) happily embed any font in a PDF, as following the bit is in no way prescribed by law, or necessary to comply with copyright legislation. It may very well be fair use to temporarily embed a font, just to enable printing, or sending a PDF to a third party, irrespective of the font vendor's wishes.

Since Prince can in no other way print the results, it is even more important to be able to embed fonts than for example OpenOffice.

Please remove this anti-feature.

Ignoring the embedding bits in the font and embedding the font anyway could result in Prince being classified as a "circumvention device" under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the US and other jurisdictions. These bits indicate the wishes of the font vendor, and in the absence of other information we have to respect that. You could try using another utility to change the embedding bits if you are absolutely certain that the license you hold for the font does in fact allow that.

The same would then hold for OpenOffice, which happily ignores the bit, but I have not seen font vendors running to sue, and given its open source status, it would be hard to keep such a feature in anyway.

I believe (but I am not a lawyer) that this is overly cautious. Setting a single bit is not an effective copy-protection measure that receives legal protection under the DMCA.

Furthermore, before even considering the license of a font, I will consider the law, which limits the restrictions a license can impose. Many activities disabled by following the bit are illegal or impossible to restrict through a license.

See: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/twm/embed/dmca.html

We feel that given the legal ambiguity in this scenario it is best to err on the side of caution, particularly given the example of the Sklyarov case, in which a trivial file manipulation was considered to be a breach of the DMCA and resulted in jail time for a software developer visiting the US.

Given that users can easily reset the embedding bits for fonts that they hold a license to, we would prefer to omit this functionality from Prince and ensure our ongoing liberty to develop and market the product. Sorry for any inconvenience this causes, hopefully future changes in legislation will make this issue go away.