US Edition“You wouldn’t steal a car” anti-piracy campaign may have used pirated fonts
- The 2004 ‘You wouldn't steal a car’ anti-piracy campaign used the pirated font XBand-Rough instead of the licensed FF Confidential font by Just van Rossum.
- This occurred because pirated fonts like XBand-Rough, a near-identical bootleg released about four years after the original, were widely circulated and commonly used in commercial settings.
- A user known as Rib on Bluesky analyzed archived campaign PDFs with FontForge and verified that the font used was a pirated clone, while the campaign's designers likely did not realize the substitution had occurred.
- Van Rossum acknowledged knowing about the pirated clone but stated he had not known it appeared in the campaign, adding, 'I find it hilarious,' and he will not pursue legal action.
- The revelation highlights the complexity surrounding intellectual property enforcement for fonts and suggests many commercial uses might involve unlicensed copies without clear legal consequences.
20 Articles
20 Articles
Do as I say, not as I do: the viral trend every millennial will probably eye-roll at
Revelations about an anti-piracy campaign video will bring the noughties all back for millennials growing up in the heady days of bootleg DVDs, PC roms, and shaky five mega-pixel cinema recordings. In intimidating and melodramatic fashion, it declared how you wouldn’t steal car, handbag, or a television. But, if you’re the anti-piracy campaign – you would steal a font. Because now, as it turns out, the typeface it used was in fact, pirated. The …
Famous anti-piracy advert 'used pirated font'
The advert compared downloading a pirate film to burgling someone’s house or taking their car (Picture: FACT/Motion Picture Association) You wouldn’t steal a car. You wouldn’t steal a handbag. You wouldn’t steal a television. You wouldn’t steal a DVD. You would steal a… font?! An amazingly ironic claim has been made about the most famous piracy ad of all time, alleging that it used a pirated font itself. The advert is well known after being play…
If you lived the time of the DVDs, at the beginning of the millennium, I'm sure you remember the aggressive anti-piracy ad that I'm going to show you.
der Standard AT
der Standard DEAn analysis of the campaign in cinemas in the early 2000s shows that the typeface used was a replica of a commercial typeface.
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