A historic Czech court ruling has allowed software pirates to rally together and crowdfund the pardon of a fellow pirate by sharing a YouTube video!
Jakub F used to be a pirated software uploader before he was brought to court and convicted in the Czech Republic. He was sentenced to a 3-year suspended imprisonment, along with his PC equipment being confiscated, but that wasn't enough for his accuser, the Business Software Alliance (BSA).
The BSA asked the court to have Jakub pay at least $370,000 in damages. But when the judge indicated that the damages seemed too high to accept, the BSA made a last minute deal with Jakub who agreed to pay them whole sum if he failed to meet a seemingly-impossible condition.
The prosecution agreed with Jakub to be exempted from all monetary damages if he made
The prosecution asked Jakub to make a video recounting his life as a software pirate and promised to wave off all monetary damages if the video was viewed more than 200,000 times on YouTube.
That BSA was confident that it was in a win-win situation. Either the video fails to reach the agreed-upon number of views and Jakub pays the whole fine, or they get their money's worth in anti-piracy propaganda. What they didn't count on, is that this deal allowed Jakub's fellow pirates to rally together and ensure that he wouldn't pay for his crime.
At the time of writing, Jakub's video has been on YouTube for one week and was viewed by more than 900,000 persons, thus fulfilling the prosecutor's demands and redeeming Jakub from financial restitution.
