Sword of Censorship looms over India’s OTT Industry?
Prologue
“…It is easy for anyone to imagine an ideal public, which leaves the freedom and choice of individuals in all uncertain matters undisturbed, and only requires them to abstain from modes of conduct which universal experience has condemned. But where has there been seen a public which set any such limit to its censorship? or when does the public trouble itself about universal experience. In its interferences with personal conduct it is seldom thinking of anything but the enormity of acting or feeling differently from itself; and this standard of judgment, thinly disguised, is held up to mankind as the dictate of religion and philosophy, by nine tenths of all moralists and speculative writers…”
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Imagine watching your favourite season of Game of Thrones on Hotstar and every other scene being either blurred. Imagine every other joke of Comicstaan on Amazon Prime being bleeped. Imagine the imagined reality of Leila on Netflix being exscinded. These imaginations may well be true soon because the Central Government is contemplating a potential censorship on such OTT (over-the top) streaming platforms. This means that either they would be asked to sanitize their content or there would be an enforcement of some sort of self-regulation that would be palatable to the general moralities (sic) of the Indian society. The move by the Government comes at the backdrop of two important developments.
First, the Supreme Court issued notice to the Centre, in May this year, on a PIL filed by the NGO Justice for Rights Foundation seeking regulation of OTT streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon, Hotstar et all. After the High Court had dismissed their petition in February, the NGO had filed an appeal in the Supreme Court claiming that the said platforms are not only displaying unlicensed, unregulated and uncertified content, but also running without being governed by any guidelines. The plea further claims that due to lack or absence of any guidelines to govern the online platforms, government agencies are creating a special class of broadcasters and discriminating against customers, Cable TV producers, and D2H operators.
Second, a code of ‘self-regulation’ was already drafted by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) in January. This was a pre-anticipated move where a bunch of OTT platforms (not all) agreed upon a broad mechanism of self-regulation before the infamous sword of censorship hits and tears their market. OTT platforms such as Netflix, Hotstar, Voot, Zee5, Arre, SonyLIV, ALT Balaji and Eros have signed this code.
The document called ‘Code of Best Practices for Online Curated Content Providers’ disallows signatory OTT platforms from streaming the following kind of content:
· Content which deliberately and maliciously disrespects the national emblem or national flag;
· Content which represents a child engaged in real or simulated sexual activities or any representation of the sexual parts of a child for primarily sexual purposes1;
· Content which deliberately and maliciously intends to outrage religious sentiments of any class, section or community;
· Content which deliberately and maliciously promotes or encourages terrorism and other forms of violence against the State (of India) or its institutions; and
· Content that has been banned for exhibition or distribution by online video service under applicable laws or by any court with competent jurisdiction.
Both these instances look fairly rational at the onset. No one should have any fundamental issue with these guidelines. But there are deeper explications to these rather simple and seemingly meritorious developments.
Firstly, OTT platforms are deeply personal in nature. They are not like cinema halls where a wider audience is watching a movie and where there is a threat of violence, if the content doesn’t matches the ‘beliefs’ of certain viewers. OTT platforms are streamed on personal devices, within a personal space. Most OTT platforms also provide separate catalogue for children targeted at their entertainment, while the adult catalogue can easily be locked by a simple password. Any censorship would be an attack on an individual’s behaviour, simply because she/he is watching the content on their personal device, almost entirely within their personal space.
Secondly, the viewer has the absolute choice ‘to watch or not to watch’. It is open like the internet. Just as we cannot regulate all content on the internet, we cannot sanitize all content on OTT streaming platforms. The viewer has a sole authority to subscribe a particular streaming platform, since most of them have payment subscription packs. Censoring content will push people to seek out uncensored material elsewhere, that will only encourage piracy and strangulate the invisible hand of the market. One cannot censor the internet. If people want to look at something online, they find alternate ways.
Thirdly, India has the worst record in censoring movies. The arbitrary manner in which film censorship is currently carried out in India is a prime example. To use a mild word — the entire process is bizarre. With changes in governance and the party in power, the ever-changing standards for an incredibly diverse population keep changing. The party in power calls the shots and all mediums of art — books, literature, songs, films, soap operas, plays and every other form that represent any kind of art have been banned in India, at the behest of ‘hurting sentiments’ of a particular community. These are extensively carried out in the name of ‘reasonable limitations’ to the ‘freedom of speech and expression’, but all have a political hue and colour attached to it. There are numerous examples of these ‘bans’ listed out in an earlier piece by me here.
Fourthly, it would distort the market since distributors abroad would not see India producing unremarkable content, they may become uninterested in licensing locally created media for international audiences. The platforms and distributors targeting Indian viewers may stem the flow of material from overseas, if they know that it’ll hit roadblocks because of arbitrary censorship guidelines. [Raja Sen, Film Critic]
The solution to the standoff between the state and the market has already been instituted by the market itself by a self-regulation code. Any further censorship by the state would not only result in a market failure but would be an assault on our liberties and right to privacy.
According to Boston Consulting Group’s titled ‘Entertainment Goes Online’, the OTT streaming market in India is set to touch $5 billion by 2023 and for the Indian youth, already 25% of media consumption is digital in nature. In this backdrop, any kind of censorship sword would surely kill our media economics.
