That one well-known anti-piracy PSA marketing campaign might have used a pirated font

In 2004, we obtained the well-known “You Wouldn’t Steal a Automobile” anti-piracy public service announcement urging the general public to not illegally obtain recordsdata like motion pictures and music. The marketing campaign in contrast file-sharing to stealing purses, televisions, and vehicles, and it steadily appeared earlier than movies in theaters and on industrial DVDs. Now, TorrentFreak factors out that the font used within the adverts might have been pirated.

As an alternative of utilizing the unique font referred to as “FF Confidential,” which was designed by Simply van Rossum in 1992 and requires licensing for industrial use, it seems that the anti-piracy marketing campaign used a font referred to as “XBAND Tough” as an alternative. XBAND Tough is a free clone of FF Confidential, created by Catapult Leisure in 1996.

How will you inform the distinction? Nicely, one Fediverse person discovered the XBAND Tough font embedded in a PDF file that was hosted on the official marketing campaign web site. TorrentFreak confirmed that XBAND Tough is embedded in each an official brochure (PDF) and an official flyer (PDF). Nevertheless, TorrentFreak cautions towards drawing any direct conclusions, because it’s fully attainable that the marketing campaign nonetheless used a licensed model.

“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,” stated Simply van Rossum to TorrentFreak.

Van Rossum says he has no plans to observe up on the entire thing as he’s now not the font’s official distributor. The licensing of FF Confidential is at the moment dealt with by Monotype.