Recently Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) try to bypass the EU sanction by helping a German company which is located in Berlin! [company information [Gold1Networks GmbH Blücherstraße 22 10961 Berlin, Registernummer: HRB 141493 B, Vertretungsberechtigter Geschäftsführer: Jens Ihlenfeldt]. the process for bypassing the EU sanction is explained following: German company has a special tools of YouTube (content id- G1NMENA) that can recognize all IRIB videos on YouTube have been uploaded by Iranian people for years and claims on all videos and monetize them for making revenue. this company sent an official email to me and approves they have a contract with IRIB! the revenue will be transferred to an Iranian person who is living in EU (the company denied to give the information of this person) and he will transfer money to Iran. it is estimated this revenue will be more that couple of ten million dollars per year.

A YouTube user named [G1NMENA] claims having contract with Iranian national TV (IRIB) for protecting their videos and claims having ownership of the copyright on thousands of videos uploaded on YouTube over several years by many Iranians. This way he has been making millions of illegal money. According to YouTube, G1NMENA is member of a network named [Gold1Networks] and operates his copyright claims, using credibility of [Gold1Networks]. Unfortunately YouTube’s approach to copyright gives the opportunity to such abusers to do whatever they want. Anyone can claim ownership of a video and YouTube accepts those claims quickly, but there is no easy way to tell youtube the claimant is fake and has no right in case that the claims are false. We hereby draw YouTube copyright department’s attention to the followings:

1- It is claimed that G1NMENA has a contract with Iranian TV. How YouTube is sure of validity of the contract? Who is legally entitled to sign on behalf of a governmental organization like Iranian TV?

2- According to copyright term and the public domain in the USA -updated on Jan 1st, 2016- (circular 38 of US copy right office) all works created by residents of Iran and published there are not protected by US copyright law. How someone can claim ownership of copyright on contents which are in the public domain? Why has YouTube awarded the content ID function to this scammer user? Why is YouTube acting against the US law?

3- Why there is no way to ask YouTube about validity of contracts and claims? Why our efforts are ignored for the sake of a fake claimant?

We urge YouTube to make a serious revision in its approach regarding copyright claims.

We also want YouTube to take an immediate action regarding this user [G1NMENA] and the [Gold1Networks] that we believe are abusing copyright terms of YouTube.

Iranian YouTubers community