Aside: article points a finger at sanctions but doesn't mention another fascinating problem-- Iran is one of the few countries left that isn't party to a copyright treaty. As Iranian author, would have to do first publication in a treaty country-- but the legal definition of "publication" is outdated in several countries and might not include, e.g., streaming. Good on these 30M guys for doing the work.
Well, if you ever need to use some software you lost the license to after legitimately purchasing it, a lot of .ir websites have very good selections of ways around that for almost any software you can imagine.
That goes with sanctions; as a result the Iranian warez scene is actually vital to their economy.
I have never seen one. Bandwidth costs are ridiculously high in Iran, so most websites are hosted outside of Iran. There are Iranian piracy sites, but they block non-Iranian IP addresses to avoid being kicked off their hosting service.
