Famous anti-piracy campaign ‘used pirated font’

A famous anti-piracy campaign from the early 2000s which became a part of pop culture history may have itself have been the product of piracy.

Social media users have discovered the font used for the dramatic “You wouldn’t steal a car” advert was pirated from a typeface created by designer Just van Rossum.

The campaign compared pirating films to stealing items such as handbags and televisions and regularly appeared in cinemas and on DVDs, with dramatic music playing in the background.

The thriller-style advert ended with the warning “Piracy. It’s a crime”.

One Bluesky user extracted the fonts used in one of the campaign’s old PDFs and made the discovery that it was actually a pirated version of Mr van Rossum’s licensed font FF Confidential.

Sky News reports that there was no evidence to suggest that the campaign’s designers were aware that the font was pirated.

At the time, Mr van Rossum’s font had been illegally cloned and re-released as the font XBand-Rough, which was widely shared and free to use.

"I had known about the ‘illegal clone’ of my font before, but I didn't know that that was the one used in the campaign,” Mr van Rossum told Sky News.

"The campaign has always had the wrong tone, which (to me) explains the level of fun that has been had at its expense. The irony of it having used a pirated font is just precious.”

After first appearing in 2004, the advert was discontinued in 2009 but has remained on cassettes and DVDs in people’s collection.