@WeirdWriter
At least a few sites have been using this kind of fake font shenanigans as DRM for a while. It's a nightmare for accessibility, and just generally a terrible user-experience (as any kind of DRM usually is):

Screen reader -> Broken, or sounds like it's possessed by an evil robot
Copy-paste -> Garbage
Search -> Haha, no
Translate -> Good luck hand-copying that language you don't know

I can't remember which exact site it was, but it was one of those that let you read limited previews of scientific papers.