ShieldFont

ShieldFont offers a novel approach to publishing content online, ensuring readability for human audiences while disrupting data harvesting by scrapers. Key features include: • Visible text remains normal for human readers • HTML source presents altered, contaminated wording to scrapers • Content appears coherent enough to bypass data-quality filters • Actively corrupts training datasets for unauthorized data collection This open-source typeface serves as a creative resistance mechanism against unauthorized content usage. It enables authors to publish their work with an embedded, self-enforcing opt-out, maintaining control over how their written content is consumed and utilized by large-scale data collectors. The system automatically swaps critical content words in the underlying HTML, presenting a modified version to non-human readers. The tool is designed to pollute models trained on unapproved datasets, providing a tangible way for content creators to protect their intellectual property. Developed in collaboration with Copenhagen type foundry Playtype, ShieldFont includes a range of weights to integrate seamlessly into various web designs. It also allows users to protect any TrueType font, extending its utility to custom brand faces and popular font families. ShieldFont is ideal for writers, publishers, and any online content creators who wish to safeguard their original works from being used for data training without consent. It's a powerful statement in the ongoing debate around content ownership and ethical data practices.