A convicted software pirate has been handed an unusual punishment. The man, named only as Jakub F, will be spared having to pay hefty damages - as long as a film denouncing piracy he was made to produce gets 200,000 views.He came to the out-of-court settlement with a host of firms whose software he pirated after being convicted by a Czech court. In return, they agreed not to sue him. The 30-year-old was also given a three-year suspended sentence.
The criminal court decided that any financial penalty would have to be decided either in civil proceedings or out of court. The firms, which included Microsoft, HBO Europe, Sony Music and Twentieth Century Fox, estimated that the financial damage amounted to 5.7m Czech Crowns (£148,000). But the Business Software Alliance (BSA), which represented Microsoft, acknowledged that Jakub could not pay that sum.
Instead, the companies said they would be happy to receive only a small payment and his co-operation in the production of the video. In order for the firms' promise not to sue to be valid, they said, the video would have to be viewed at least 200,000 times within two months of its publication this week. A spokesman for the BSA told the BBC that the stipulation was to ensure that Jakub would help share it as widely as possible. But, if the video did not reach the target, the spokesman said that - "in theory" - the firms would have grounds to bring a civil case for damages.
The YouTube film, currently at over 450k views means Jakub should avoid any further legal action.
[Editor's note: SiKing also submitted this, but not quite in time to get it merged with the other already in the queue.]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 28 2015, @01:13AM
but the question is how many people watched the video all the way through vs how many people watched 10 seconds of it and it incremented the counter. The video isn't even in English so who would really watch it all the way through or 'benefit' from it. As people in the video comments point out this video doesn't seem to be encouraging anyone not to pirate anything and it doesn't seem to have 'humiliated' anyone being that those that 'watched' it are mostly those that just felt sorry for someone that fell victim to a broken governmental system and watched it to give him the views necessary to get off the hook. The only ones humiliated here were those handing out this punishment. As those in the video comments pointed out this sure did backfire and this should have obviously been expected to have backfired.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday November 28 2015, @01:31AM
YouTube analytics tells you the average number of seconds viewers watched a particular video for. This is often far less than the duration of the video. You could just multiply the average number of seconds watched by the number of views to get the "true" number of views.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 28 2015, @02:06AM
Does youtube analytics count downloads with something like youtube-dl as a full watch?
If so, I'll download it 50 times to help the guy out.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday November 28 2015, @02:23AM
I doubt it. My guess is that YouTube keeps those stats internally and doesn't share them. It's a wonder they haven't taken more steps to break YouTube downloader extensions.
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1714329 [google.com]
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2991785 [google.com]
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 28 2015, @02:42AM
They constantly make changes that break youtube-dl -- but it is so well supported that work-arounds are released within hours.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday November 28 2015, @05:49AM
YouTube analytics tells you the average number of seconds viewers watched a particular video for.
What does it measure when you know a video exists, and still can't be bothered to launch it?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday November 28 2015, @06:04AM
Nothing. Or maybe 1-2 seconds if you accidentally open a video and close it.
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