State broadcaster Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting has filed a lawsuit against Iran’s largest online video hosting website Aparat.
The move is part of a wider crackdown by IRIB that considers itself the sole arbiter of content delivery in the country, Digiato reported on Nov. 7.
In its lawsuit, IRIB seeks to remove its content from Aparat, which has been hosted without prior permission.
IRIB’s Director of Intellectual Property Hamed Moini confirmed the news and said, “According to the IRIB director’s inauguration letter, the organization is in charge of regulating publication of multimedia on the Internet.”
Moini noted that IRIB does not intend to stop the activities of websites like Aparat, “which is likely to be of little help to the burgeoning platform”.
According to the official, IRIB has filed a lawsuit against Aparat claiming that “it does not have the required permits and has repeatedly published unauthorized copies of content owned by IRIB and has, therefore, infringed of our copyright”.
Although the website is still accessible, due to the court order, its application has been omitted from the local Android app store, Café Bazaar.
In response to the news, CEO and founder of Aparat, Mohammad Javad Shakouri, said Aparat is not legally responsible for the content that users upload.
Shakouri explained that the company is only bound to omit the content that legal bodies officially ordered them to remove.
“IRIB has not filed any complaint in this regard, prior to the recent lawsuit,” he said.
This is while IRIB officials claim they have warned the company on several occasions.
Shakouri also said that in spite of their takedown request, “IRIB has asked us to create officials channels on Aparat [for them]”.
Aparat is the second most successful Iranian startup and the Economist estimated the business’s worth to be $30 million in 2015. It is also the seventh most popular Iranian website.
On a daily basis, 4 million videos are played on the website and it has 14 million unique visitors per month.
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