YouTube just saved one guy a lot of money. TorrentFreak reports that the Czech Republic's first convicted software pirate was offered an unusual punishment method: star in an anti-pirating PSA and get 200,000 views on YouTube, or pay a huge fine. Luckily for him the video now has over 400,000 views.

The man, only known as Jakub F, was found guilty of sharing illegal copies of Windows and other copyrighted software online over the past eight years. He originally got a three-year suspended sentence and was asked to hand over his PC, hard drives and DVD backups. He was also slapped with a 5.7 million crown ($223,709) fine to cover damages to software producers. Jakub F couldn't pay the fine, so the Business Software Alliance (BSA) helped him settle out-of-court with rightsholders. That way he only had to pay part of the fine and the rest of the money was made up by creating a video about software piracy that would be at least moderately successful.

If the video hadn't hit the 200,000 views mark, Jakub F would have needed to pay the entire fine. This might be the very definition of "dodged a bullet."