Comment 1 for bug 409101

I've noticed, that mscorefonts are available packaged in deb package too, see ttf-microsoft-corefonts package:

http://archive.debian-maintainers.org/unofficial/packages/microsoft-corefonts/
https://launchpad.net/~ivan1986/+archive/ppa/+packages

It seems font license now allows to distribute the fonts not only in original compressed cab archive (.exe_ form, but also in other forms, like tar and deb packages - look at license file in ttf-microsoft-corefonts package above.

If I'm right, then ubuntu can have ttf-microsoft-corefonts-base and ttf-microsoft-corefonts-extra packages in multiverse repository and this bug would be fixed ;)