Famous Anti-Piracy Ad Campaign from the 2000s May Have Used a Pirated Font: Reports

You wouldn’t steal a font.

A famous anti-piracy ad campaign from the 2000s used a typeface that may have been pirated, according to social media users and various outlets.

Per posts on Bluesky, the font used in the ads — which appeared in movie theaters and on DVDs and compared pirating media to stealing cars, handbags and televisions — allegedly used pirated typace that was originally created by designer Just van Rossum.

One Bluesky user extracted the text used and discovered that it was allegedly a pirated version of van Rossum’s licensed font FF Confidential. Sky News and Torrent Freak were able to do the same and found identical results.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPA) and the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore, which both worked together on the ad, did not respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment. The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), which also played a role, told PEOPLE in a statement, “This campaign predates anyone currently working at FACT, so we are not able to comment.”

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In the famous ad, a teenage girl is seen on her computer, illegally downloading media. As different scenes play with respective title cards — including “You wouldn’t steal a car” and “You wouldn’t steal a television” — the campaign then states, “Downloading pirated films is stealing.”

“Stealing is against the law,” the seconds-long ad continues, then concluding: “Piracy. It’s a crime.”

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In a statement to Sky News, van Rossum said, “I had known about the ‘illegal clone’ of my font before, but I didn’t know that that was the one used in the campaign.”

“The campaign has always had the wrong tone, which [to me] explains the level of fun that has been had at its expense. The irony of it having used a pirated font is just precious,” he added to the outlet.

At the time, van Rossum’s font was allegedly copied illegally and reissued as the font XBand-Rough, which was free to use and widely accessible, per a Bluesky user.