The Piracy Paradox: Anti-Piracy Campaign Caught Using Pirated Font
Description
A screenshot of a social media post by a user named 'Rib' that exposes a case of digital hypocrisy. The post explains that the iconic font from the 'You wouldn't steal a car' anti-piracy campaign was designed by Just Van Rossum (brother of Python creator Guido van Rossum), but was later cloned and illegally distributed as 'XBAND Rough'. The user then details their investigation, using the Wayback Machine to find a PDF from the original campaign, and analyzing it with the font editor FontForge. The climax of the post is an embedded screenshot of a FontForge dialog window titled 'Pick a font, any fo...'. This window lists the fonts embedded in the PDF, with the last one highlighted: 'MEPKJD+XBANDRough'. This provides definitive proof that the anti-piracy campaign ironically used a pirated font. The humor stems from the perfect, real-world example of institutional hypocrisy, discovered through some light digital forensics, a story particularly amusing to developers who appreciate irony and the complexities of software licensing
Comments
31Comment deleted
It's the ultimate licensing violation: your entire anti-piracy campaign has a circular dependency on piracy
The “You wouldn’t steal a car” ad shipping with a pirated font is peak irony - proof that if you skip the SBOM, even your ethics become an unlicensed dependency
The most reliable way to detect pirated software in your organization? Check what your legal department is using for their anti-piracy campaigns. It's like finding your security team's passwords on a Post-it note, but with better typography
The anti-piracy campaign's use of a pirated font is peak "do as I say, not as I do" energy - especially ironic given it was designed by Python creator Guido's brother. It's like discovering your security consultant left their AWS credentials in a public GitHub repo, except this one's been immortalized in pop culture for two decades. The real kicker? Someone had to fire up FontForge and dig through archived PDFs to catch them red-handed. Nothing says "you wouldn't download a car" quite like downloading a font you didn't license
You wouldn’t steal a car, but apparently you’d ship a pirated font in the brochure; proof that our zero‑trust architecture trusts PDFs
We’ve got SBOMs for containers and npm, but marketing shipped a PDF with MEPKJD+XBANDRough - apparently our supply‑chain policy doesn’t include fonts
PDF font subsets: the original code obfuscator, predating JS minifiers by decades - still unreadable after all these years
Do as we say, not as we do ahh campaign Comment deleted
I'll be completely honest, I like piracy. I don't justify it morally, it just reminds me of my childhood. A simpler time when programs didn't rely on servers and thus there was no need to sell them as subscriptions... Ah... Sweet memories Comment deleted
Piracy to me is morally justified when mega corporations are impacted by it. Same thing for preserving the past, or making accessible for poor countries where education or other things are not accesible easily to everyone (just see Cuba). I obviously pay for things, don't get me wrong, but I still pirate some others when needed and I don't condone who make use of it Comment deleted
If buying is not owning, piracy is not stealing Comment deleted
Pirating isn't stealing. But using a copyrighted font without acknowledgement is copyright infringement, not piracy Comment deleted
Usage of copyrighted intellectual and artistic property is always under a strict control. Restreaming shows, usage of arts including fonts have to be acknowledged and sometimes may also require you to pay residuals Comment deleted
Pirate everything possible is my motto Comment deleted
🏴☠️ Comment deleted
Btw, there are a lot of research that piracy actually help, because its free advertising Comment deleted
aren't fonts, like, un-copyright-able? Comment deleted
You gotta be surprised how crazy and expensive fonts licensing models Comment deleted
The result of a text being rendered with a given font isn't copyrightable. The font itself is. Comment deleted
Its getting really complicated here, licensing models for many fonts include total amount of copies allowed to be produced using font Comment deleted
Sure, although that's unrelated to copyright, really Comment deleted
The licensing models are directly related to and enabled by the copyright held in the font software (and sometimes the design itself, depending on jurisdiction). The license is the mechanism through which the copyright holder controls the use of their protected work. Comment deleted
Although it's a little ambiguous to refer to "the font itself." It's more accurate to say, the sequence of bytes making up a font file (ttf, otf, or whatever) is copyrightable, but the resulting letterforms aren't. A single glyph is generally too small to qualify as a creative work, just like a single note or chord isn't a copyrightable song. Comment deleted
One significant part of any investigation is not to find yourself guilty Comment deleted
They also pirated the music used in the ad Comment deleted
People just overreact to any piracy https://x.com/HakitaDev/status/1797245014268891236 Comment deleted
original post: https://fedi.rib.gay/notes/a6xqityngfubsz0f Comment deleted
https://torrentfreak.com/rights-group-fined-for-not-paying-artist-for-anti-piracy-ad-120717/ Comment deleted
To be aware of the fact that some font was illegally re-released as a freeware, one has to be familiar enough with the topic (the fonts in public access), which most people are not. Comment deleted
the jingle they used was also pirated tho so its just a lovely lil extra Comment deleted
Was gonna say Comment deleted