they make it easier for people to pirate fonts...

Hmmm, that's a new one on me. How so? It seems that any of the metrics information available in an AFM could also be extracted from either an NFNT or SFNT resource Mac-side. My opinion is that AFM files are a quaint holdover from the glory days of desktop typesetting, when some applications had to parse the metrics independently from the screen fonts. Does any other platform actually use the AFM file format?

It makes perfect sense to include both AFM and INF files along the standard PFB and PFM files when you produce PC Type 1 fonts (Windows PostScript fonts).

On MacOS X, Windows, and Unix systems, there are typesetting applications such as LaTeX that directly use PFB and AFM files. Not providing the AFM file makes the use of the font cumbersome.

Some CAD and plotting applications that do custom font handling use AFM files.

On some versions of Windows, PFM files that ship with a font may cause problems -- especially if the PostScript font was made with an ancient application such as Fontographer. In such case, the user can delete the PFM file and use ATM to create a new PFM file from AFM and INF (both are necessary).

I cannot think of a way how providing AFM files could help piracy.

Adam