There Are Hilarious New Allegations About Those "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" Anti-Piracy Ads

It would be really funny if the "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" anti-piracy ads turned out to use pirated — sorry, stolen — materials, huh? Like, really really funny. Who could ask for a better piece de resistance to highlight just how outrageous its central thesis is — that downloading something from the internet is somehow just as serious an offense as grand theft auto? Well, readers, have we a plot twist for you. As TorrentFreak reports, there's a very high chance that the grungy font which was used to display that now infamous line may itself be a ripped-off […]

Apr 29, 2025 - 20:41

There Are Hilarious New Allegations About Those "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" Anti-Piracy Ads

It would be really funny if those iconically preachy "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" anti-piracy ads turned out to use pirated — sorry, stolen — materials, huh? Like, really really funny. Who could ask for a richer pièce de résistance to highlight just how outrageous its central thesis is: that downloading something from the internet is somehow just as serious or harmful an offense as grand theft auto?

Well, readers, have we a plot twist for you. As TorrentFreak reports, there's a very high chance that the grungy font used for that now-infamous line may itself be a ripped-off version of someone else's typeface. Oops.

The now-endlessly-memed PSA was first released in 2004 as part of the "Piracy. It's a Crime" campaign — and it was everywhere, first at movie theaters, before being stuffed into all your home movie releases. (The group behind the PSA was formerly called the Motion Picture Association of America, but now just goes by the Motion Picture Association, or MPA.)

With the frenetic style of editing popular at the time, the ad starts off by showing a young woman clicking a huge "DOWNLOAD" button on a website with a banner that says "Feature Films" — because that's how pirating works — while a crunchy, uptempo electronic soundtrack that would sound more at home in a French parkour movie blasts in your ears. (An alternative version starts with someone buying pirated DVDs from a street vendor.)

Then it cuts to the "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" text flashing on a black screen, followed by a dude in a leather jacket jimmying open the window of an old Mercedes. Repeat for its other extraordinary lines, like "You wouldn't steal a handbag."

There's long been speculation about the provenance of the ad's materials, according to TorrentFreak, including some reports that claimed that the ad's music was pirated. These turned out to be false, but there does appear to be something amiss about the video's iconic font, FF Confidential.

The typeface was created in 1992 by Just van Rossum, the brother of the guy who invented the programming language Python, and earlier this month, investigative reporter Melissa Lewis observed that a free font called XBAND Rough appeared identical to it. After contacting van Rossum, Lewis confirmed that Xband Rough was an "illegal clone" of his creation — "it's just been around forever and is ubiquitous," she wrote.

You can see where this is going. Soon, another internet sleuth by the handle "Rib" discovered that the MPA's anti-piracy campaign used XBAND Rough — not FF Confidential — in a brochure shared on its website in 2005. The match was made with the software FontForge.

Technically, this doesn't confirm that the video itself used the FF Confidential rip-off, only that supplementary campaign materials did — but it's strong evidence in that direction — an outcome that would be incredibly ironic (tellingly, the MPA declined to comment to Ars Technica.)

"I knew my font was used for the campaign and that a pirated clone named XBand-Rough existed," Van Rossum told TorrentFreak. "I did not know that the campaign used XBand-Rough and not FF Confidential, though. So this fact is new to me, and I find it hilarious."

More on piracy: Meta Says It's Okay to Feed Copyrighted Books Into Its AI Model Because They Have No "Economic Value"

The post There Are Hilarious New Allegations About Those "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" Anti-Piracy Ads appeared first on Futurism.