A man sentenced for pirating movies, TV shows and software was given an out-of-court ultimatum, that forced him to garner over 200,000 views on an anti-piracy video he’d been made to feature in, or else he’d have been sued hundreds of thousands of dollars.
30-year-old Jakub F was caught and sentenced for pirating content from companies such as Microsoft, HBO Europe, Sony Music, and Twentieth Century Fox, with Czech courts giving him a three-year suspended sentence after it was discovered that he uploaded copies of Windows 7 and Windows 8 to file-sharing networks. The Business Software Alliance (BSA) represented Microsoft in the case, with the company looking to sue him for 5.7 million Czech Crowns ($224,000) in damages.
However, realizing that Jakub didn’t have access to this kind of money, BSA and Microsoft cut him a deal – if he agreed to be the subject of a 2-minute anti-piracy video, and that video went on to achieve 200,000 views over the course of the next two months, then they would choose to not sue him and he wouldn’t be left bankrupt, with him only being required to pay a small fine instead.
Needless to say, Jakub swallowed his pride and agreed to film the video, which you can view below:
The video was embedded on the BSA’s anti-piracy site mojepiratstvi.cz, accompanied by a message from Jakub, written in Czech, which reads: “I thought I was not doing anything wrong. I thought it did not hurt the big companies… I was convinced that I was too small a fish.”
The video has now been viewed over 400,000 times on YouTube, which means that Jakub no longer risks being sued. However, Microsoft will be hoping that this series of events will lead to other pirates being dissuaded from uploading their software onto torrent sites in the future.
[Via Geek.com]
