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Rib :ms_red_panda: (@Rib)
fedi.rib.gayToday 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 (https://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 (https://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! 📎
In the thread it looks like in the US you can’t copyright the shapes, but in the UK, you can for 25 years. Also the .ttf file that contains the code to make the font render correctly at low DPI is copyrightable in the US.