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It's Illegal to Pirate Films in Iran, Unless You're the Government (vice.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: While legal "pirating" exists in Iran, six administrators of the Iranian pirate movie site TinyMoviez have been arrested by Iranian authorities. This was a website the Iranian national broadcaster had used to download and nationally air movies in the past. The exact date of the arrests are unknown, but Tehran's Prosecutor General announced the arrests on September 26, 2017. The website is still online, but users haven't been able to download content from it since September 19, 2017. Now TinyMoviez administrators are finding themselves on the wrong side of Iran's odd and often pirating friendly copyright laws. Iran's copyright law is a quagmire when it comes to understanding what rights exists for creators of an original piece of work, and what rights exist for those wanting to re-distribute original works, such as movies. Meanwhile, Article 8 gives the government broad powers to reproduce work that is not its own. This means that the government is exempt from Article 23, which criminalizes the theft of another's work.
That shows the moronic premise of the article. If the government doesn't make it a crime, it isn't a crime. "IP rights" are nowhere considered "natural law", they are specific government policy with aim for certain economic outcome.That Iran happens to differ from US law is unsurprising, MANY countries differ from US re: IP law (e.g. software patents). Hard to take article seriously when 99% of it is misguided and superfluous. But "OMG IRAN" plays well in Zionist States of America, so...