There have been many resources that discuss the complex nature of the status of designers having the opportunity to use more than just the standard web fonts. To give a brief review, here are some of the issues at hand:

What designers would like:

Designers are looking for the capability to enhance their web designs with typography by using more fonts than just the standard web-safe fonts (for those of you who are unfamiliar, the list is extremely short with only a couple of serif and san-serif options). There are “hack” solutions out there like sIFR and Cufón that limits a designer to using them only in headlines or other small pieces of copy.

The issue for type designers and foundries:

Solutions have been presented that suggest loading the raw font files to the web. The problem that exists is that anyone will then have the ability to steal the source font file just as easily as they can swipe an image from a website. For obvious reasons, font designers and foundries don’t want that to happen. To be honest, neither do designers. We are grateful for the design work of these artists and feel they have a right to have their work protected.

Solutions are on the horizon. Here is a the best article I’ve found to date that discusses the history, the current status and the potential future of the use of fonts in web design: More

Hope this helps someone out there!