The option Allow Republishing is for those very generous souls who allow others to add to, or modify, their work and pass it along. If another user has your .BE file, or has imported all the glyphs by converting lettering designs to objects, they may be allowed to make a new font out of it. Does this replace the original copyright? No. Those objects are always tagged with each copyright. The objects that the second user has modified will be able to have another copyright added to the original. This can go on through as many people as have republished the font. When more than one user’s work exists on the page, all copyrights will appear.
If any user limits what can be done with the font, only that user can adjust that setting. Subsequent publishers can add further restriction, but not remove any. When a font is published, the publisher’s serial number is turned into a unique identifier and placed in the copyright. This means a publisher can modify their own settings, but they may not modify another publisher’s settings.
We have made every effort to protect the work of individual digitizers. We use encryption that’s state of the art. Of course, hackers are always at work in the world, so there can be no guarantees. We all know that locks are generally to keep honest folk out, and that’s what this is: a set of locks. Of course, ordinary stitch files carry no information about their digitizer, and they’re easily copied by any user, so this is a big improvement over the status quo.