{"id":9344,"date":"2017-10-03T05:29:02","date_gmt":"2017-10-03T09:29:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=9344"},"modified":"2017-10-03T05:29:02","modified_gmt":"2017-10-03T09:29:02","slug":"iran-arrests-six-movie-pirates-rival-licensed-pirates-complain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2017\/10\/03\/iran-arrests-six-movie-pirates-rival-licensed-pirates-complain\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran Arrests Six Movie Pirates After Rival &#8216;Licensed&#8217; Pirates Complain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Six people said to be the administrators of &#8216;pirate&#8217; movie site Tinymoviez have been arrested by Iranian authorities. What makes the case unusual is that it&#8217;s possible for such sites to be licensed by the state, to legally &#8216;pirate&#8217; Hollywood content. It&#8217;s reported that licensed &#8216;pirate&#8217; site operators complained about their rival and the platform was partially shut down.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.parstimes.com\/law\/copyright_law.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Article 23<\/a>\u00a0of Iran\u2019s Copyright law is quite clear. Anyone who publishes, distributes or broadcasts another person\u2019s work without permission \u201cshall be condemned to corrective imprisonment for a period of time not less than six months and not more than three years.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That being said, not all content receives protection. Since there are no copyright agreements between Iran and the United States, for example, US content is pirated almost at will in the country. Even the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/iranian-government-runs-public-warez-server-100824\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">government itself has run \u2018warez\u2019 servers<\/a>\u00a0in the past.<\/p>\n<p>That makes the arrest late last month of six men tied to movie piracy site TinyMoviez all the more unusual. At first view (translated image below), the site looks just like any other streaming portal offering Hollywood movies.<\/p>\n<p><center>TinyMoviez<a href=\"https:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/images\/tinymoviez.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-145408\" src=\"https:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/images\/tinymoviez.png\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 943px) 100vw, 943px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/images\/tinymoviez.png 943w, https:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/images\/tinymoviez-200x150.png 200w\" alt=\"\" width=\"943\" height=\"705\" \/><\/a><\/center>Indeed, much of the content comes from abroad, augmented with local Farsi-language subtitles or audio voiceovers.<\/p>\n<p>However, according to a source cited by the Center for Human Rights in Iran (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.iranhumanrights.org\/2017\/10\/admins-of-iranian-pirated-movies-website-arrested-after-complaints-from-licensed-rivals\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">CHRI<\/a>), the site was targeted because rival pirate sites (which had been licensed to \u2018pirate\u2019 by the Iranian government) complained about its unlicensed status.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn July and August [2017], there was a meeting between a number of Iranian start-up companies and [current Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Javad Azari] Jahromi, who was asked by film and TV series distributors as well as video game developers to help shut down and monitor unlicensed rivals,\u201d a film distributor in Tehran told CHRI.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe start-ups made the request because they could not compete with a site like TinyMovies,\u201d the source added. \u201cAfter that meeting, Jahromi was nicknamed the \u2018Start-Up Tsar\u2019 because of his supportive comments. They were happy that he became the minister.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That being said, the announcement from the authorities suggested broader issues, including that the site offered movies (none are singled out) that may be unacceptable by Iranian standards.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTehran\u2019s prosecutor, after referral of the case to the Cyberspace corruption and prostitution department, said that the defendants in the case, of whom six were currently detained, produced vagabond and pornographic films and sold them in cyberspace,\u201d Tehran Prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mizanonline.ir\/fa\/news\/352727\">said<\/a>\u00a0in an announcement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis gang illegally operated the largest source for downloading Hollywood movies and over the past three years, has distributed 18,000 foreign films and series after dubbing, many of which were indecent and immoral, and thus facilitated by illegitimate funds.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While the authorities say that TinyMoviez has been taken down, various URLs (including Tinyz.us, ironically) now divert to a new domain, Timoviez2.net. However, at least for the moment, download links seem to be disabled.<\/p>\n<p>Source: \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/torrentfreak.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/torrentfreak.png\" alt=\"TorrentFreak\" width=\"38\" height=\"38\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/iran-arrests-six-movie-pirates-after-rival-licensed-pirates-complain-171003\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">TorrentFreak.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\">Six people said to be the administrators of &#8216;pirate&#8217; movie site Tinymoviez have been arrested by Iranian authorities. What makes the case unusual is that it&#8217;s possible for such sites to be licensed by the <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2017\/10\/03\/iran-arrests-six-movie-pirates-rival-licensed-pirates-complain\/\" title=\"Iran Arrests Six Movie Pirates After Rival &#8216;Licensed&#8217; Pirates Complain\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6505,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[1778,564,1811,4228],"class_list":{"0":"post-9344","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-world","9":"tag-copyright","10":"tag-iran","11":"tag-piracy","12":"tag-tinymoviez","13":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9344"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9345,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9344\/revisions\/9345"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}