Famous ‘You Wouldn’t Steal a Car’ Anti-Piracy Ad Accused of Piracy

Remember that hysterically aggressive “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car” anti-piracy ad that you and your frosted tips and JNCOs were forced to sit through as you watched DVDs in the early 2000s? The one that tried to equate pirating Shrek 2 with hot-wiring a Mercedes? Turns out the moral panic it tried to spark was built on a slightly hypocritical foundation: the ad itself may have pirated its iconic edgy, scribbly font.

The Motion Picture Association (formerly the MPAA, now just MPA) might have used a ripped-off typeface in their famously preachy campaign about how piracy is theft. According to TorrentFreak and journalist Melissa Lewis, the PSA’s gritty typeface wasn’t the legally licensed FF Confidential it claimed to be, designed in 1992 by Just van Rossum, but rather a janky knockoff called XBAND Rough.

The ‘You Wouldn’t Steal a Car’ Piracy Ad Might Have Pirated Its Iconic Font

By the way, here’s a little fun fact sidenote: Rossum’s brother, Guido van Rossum, created the Python programming language used by millions of coders around the world.  

XBAND Rough has been floating around the digital back alleys of the internet for years. Someone with the handle “Rib” used a tool called FontForge to determine that the MPA’s 2005 campaign brochure used the pirated clone instead of the legitimate font. While it’s not definitive proof that the actual video used it too, it is kind of hard to unsee once you have that backstory in your head.

Van Rossum himself was amused, telling TorrentFreak that the discovery was “hilarious.” The MPA, for its part, chose the time-honored PR strategy of remaining perfectly silent and still, hoping everyone forgets it’s even there.

The ad that tried to guilt an entire generation of LimeWire users compared piracy to felonies, all while possibly using pirated material itself. You wouldn’t pirate a font, would you?