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WTF?! In what have to be the very definition of irony, some of the notorious anti-piracy campaigns from 20 years in the past could have included a font that was, in essence, stolen. The “You Would not Steal a Automotive” PSA continues to be remembered by many individuals sufficiently old to recall its 2004 launch, but it surely appears the advert did not heed its personal warning.
The advert first appeared in cinemas in 2004 as a joint manufacturing of the UK’s Federation Towards Copyright Theft (FACT) and the Movement Image Affiliation of America (MPAA), earlier than increasing to DVDs and Blu-rays.
The clip exhibits individuals stealing varied objects, akin to a automobile, an enormous CRT TV – which seems to be notably awkward – and a DVD. It warns that whereas most viewers would by no means commit these crimes, they’re akin to downloading a pirated movie.
There was additionally one other model that changed the “downloading” teenager with two women being provided bootleg discs by a road vendor.
The adverts solely lasted till 2008, however they’re remembered by many, particularly as they had been become the “You would not obtain a automobile” meme, which some individuals began believing was the actual slogan due to the Mandela impact. They had been additionally parodied brilliantly within the magnificent UK present The IT crowd.
Now, many years later, it seems that the font used within the commercials was itself stolen. TorrentFreak studies that the adverts seem to make use of the FF Confidential font, which was created by Simply Van Rossum – whose brother Guido Van Rossum created the Python programming language – in 1992. Nonetheless, they actually used a special, freely out there font referred to as XBand Tough from 1996 that’s just about an identical. When journalist Melissa Lewis requested Van Rossum concerning the two, he stated XBand Tough is an “unlawful clone” of FF Confidential.
“I knew my font was used for the marketing campaign and {that a} pirated clone named XBand-Tough existed. I didn’t know that the marketing campaign used XBand-Tough and never FF Confidential, although. So, this reality is new to me, and I discover it hilarious,” Van Rossum informed the publication.
Through the use of FontForge on a PDF from the web site for the marketing campaign (net.archive.org/net/20051223…); I can verify that they’re certainly utilizing the unlawful clone model of the font, reasonably than the licensed one!
– Rib (@rib.gay) April 23, 2025 at 5:13 PM
A Bluesky consumer referred to as Rib used the Wayback Machine to confirm that the XBand Tough font is embedded in a 2005 PDF file hosted on the official anti-piracy marketing campaign web site.
Van Rossum is now not the font’s official distributor, so he has no intention of pursuing the matter. The licensing is at present dealt with by Monotype. FontShop Worldwide had the unique rights earlier than 2014.
