Iconic Anti-Piracy Ad May Have Used Pirated Font

It’s 1 of the astir iconic PSAs for a definite breed of millennial who was downloading escaped movies and euphony successful the mid-2000s. The anti-piracy advertisement “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car” is seared into countless brains for its goofy music, its silly connection and its distinctive style. But what if that benignant itself was pirated? That’s the assertion being made by folks connected societal media who person done a spot of digging.

The TV ad, which is disposable connected YouTube, premiered successful 2004 and if you haven’t seen it successful a while, it’s worthy taking a stroll down representation lane.

The advertisement featured animated graphics that work things similar “you wouldn’t bargain a car,” and “you wouldn’t bargain a handbag,” and “you wouldn’t bargain a television,” each displayed successful a unsocial font. Then we get to the existent connection of the ad, with the connection “you wouldn’t bargain a DVD” yet followed up with “downloading pirated films is stealing.”

The font is truthful unsocial that the PSA is often parodied successful a mode that you tin instantly spot, and it shows up arsenic a meme connected societal media each the time.

As Torrent Freak points out, the font successful the PSA appears to beryllium FF Confidential, created by Just Van Rossum successful 1992. And radical person agelong assumed that the radical down the advertisement utilized that font.

But online sleuths person precocious discovered by looking astatine the aged run materials that the font really utilized was called XBAND Rough. It looks precisely similar FF Confidential due to the fact that it was illegally cloned from that typeface, but XBAND Rough was free. And thus, it was a pirated mentation of a font that radical had to wage for.

“Naturally, it would beryllium hilarious if the anti-piracy run really turned retired to person utilized this pirated font, truthful I went sleuthing and rapidly recovered a PDF from the run tract with the font embedded,” societal media idiosyncratic @rib explained.

Torrent Freak confirmed the font successful the run materials is XBAND Rough, but determination is inactive the anticipation that the font utilized successful the TV ads themselves were a licensed version, bought and paid for. There’s nary mode to cheque connected that, unfortunately.

But the elemental information that the run materials—PDFs disposable connected the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine since the website is nary longer active— were decidedly utilizing a pirated font is beauteous comic by itself.

Torrent Freak adjacent talked to the font’s creator, who didn’t cognize if the font utilized successful the commercialized was licensed but recovered the concern “hilarious.”