Today Melissa Lewis over on BlueSky pointed out that the font used in the infamous "You wouldn't steal a car" anti-piracy campaign was actually designed by Just van Rossum, whose brother, Guido, created the Python programming language (bsky.app/profile/melissa.news/post/3ln7hx5rhcj2v)

She also pointed out that the font had been cloned and released illegally for free under the name "XBAND Rough". Naturally, it would be hilarious if the anti-piracy campaign actually turned out to have used this pirated font, so I went sleuthing and quickly found a PDF from the campaign site with the font embedded (
web.archive.org/web/20051223202935/http://www.piracyisacrime.com:80/press/pdfs/150605_8PP_brochure.pdf).

So I chucked it into FontForge and yep, turns out the campaign used a pirated font the entire time!
Melissa Lewis (@melissa.news)

TIL: The 2000s piracy PSA used a font designed by the fantastic Just van Rossum, whose brother Guido created the Python programming language. https://fontsinuse.com/uses/67480/piracy-it-s-a-crime-psa

Bluesky Social

@Rib
Not sure if the xband font was a clone as it's slightly different and it was made by Catapult Entertainment in 1996 for the XBAND service. It was an online gaming service for the SNES and the Megadrive. The company was bought by MPath Interactive in 1996. Just found that on Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBAND

MPath was bought by GameSpy which was bought by glu mobile which was bought by Electronic Arts in 2021. Which probably has the rights on this font now.

XBAND - Wikipedia

@Rib
Anyway the font file seems to say that commercial use is not allowed so BREIN probably never had the right to use the font in the first place.