In Iran the copyrights of foreign works are not well protected. This lead to a lot of copying: western software and books are/were available for little more than the price of the writable CD-ROM or paper+ink you got it on. Translations of works were slightly more expensive, that the translator did have to get paid.

Since Windows (etc.) was free, and the university thought curriculum based largely on US uni-books, Windows is/was everywhere, even in sensitive environments. Window has the worst track record privacy and security (remember NSA_KEY?), and Iran got bitten by this very hard.