There’s an infamous anti-piracy advertisement from back in 2004 that online oldsters will immediately recognize: “You wouldn’t steal a car,” it begins, complete with shakycam footage of some sketchy looking dude popping a lock, before rolling into various other types of theft and eventually equating it all with downloading a copy of Shrek 2. The ad makes it dramatically clear: Stealing Shrek will get you hard time in the slam when you’re inevitably busted for your criminal ways.

It was, and is, overwrought and silly, and so of course it inspired numerous parodies and memes: The British comedy series The IT Crowd did a particularly good one a few years after the original aired—in fact the old URL, piracyisacrime.com, now directs to The IT Crowd Clip on YouTube. I urge you to watch it. The ad itself was only around for a short time, but “you wouldn’t download a car” has endured in shitpost form for decades; it’s practically embedded in the fabric of the internet at this point.

But as good as many of these parodies are, none are as ridiculous (and funny) as the recent discovery that the world’s best-known anti-piracy ad may have used a pirated font.

The distinctive font used in the ad appears to be FF Confidential, created by Just van Rossum in 1992. But there’s another font called XBand Rough that’s virtually identical, and when journalist Melissa Lewis reached out to van Rossum about it, he told her XBand Rough is an “illegal clone” of FF Confidential.

This is where it gets interesting. After all this, another Bluesky user named Rib used the FontForge tool on a PDF file from the old anti-piracy campaign, available via the Wayback Machine, and discovered the file in question uses the XBand Rough font—the clone.

      • ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        6 hours ago

        It looks like I’m using an adblocker you say? Well, I have to agree there!

        Short of being able to actually read the article, “free my mans he didn’t do nothing.” So what he had weed and guns including destructive devices according to the ATF, did he hurt anyone or was he just mega fucking cool? If nobody was harmed and he didn’t have a manifesto, the worst crimes he’s guilty of are “possessing metal we say no to” and “smoking herbs we say no to,” I.E “not shit.”

        Now, if he did hurt someone or threaten his wife or some shit, then yeah, lock him up and give me his guns and weed for safe keeping.