Netflix, Amazon, JioCinema-Backed Group Protests New Tobacco Warning Guidelines

An Indian group representing Netflix, Amazon and Disney has instructed the federal government its new tobacco warning guidelines are unimaginable to implement for streaming giants and can impinge on content material creators’ freedom of expression, a letter seen by Reuters confirmed.

As a part of India’s anti-tobacco drive, the well being ministry final month ordered streaming platforms to insert static well being warnings throughout smoking scenes inside three months. Additionally, India needs at the very least 50 seconds of anti-tobacco disclaimers, together with an audio-visual, at the beginning and in the midst of every program.

The three firms, and Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s streaming platform JioCinema, have been just lately a part of a privately held dialogue to think about pushback choices, together with a authorized problem, as executives frightened that the principles would require modifying of hundreds of thousands of hours of Indian and Hollywood content material.

The quantity of multilingual content material on platforms “could be very excessive … there’s a sensible impossibility related to together with such warnings throughout content material,” the letter by the Web and Cellular Affiliation of India (IAMAI) said.

IAMAI requested the well being ministry to revisit the “onerous” guidelines, saying a survey had proven viewers have been detached to depictions of smoking on streaming platforms, the letter mentioned.

Netflix declined to remark, whereas IAMAI and the opposite firms didn’t instantly reply. The well being ministry additionally didn’t reply.

Past Hollywood content material, streaming firms Netflix, Amazon, Disney and JioCinema have turn into inreasingly common in India. Fashionable Hindi content material starring Bollywood actors on such platforms have smoking scenes.

Activists have welcomed India’s new guidelines, saying it might discourage smoking in a rustic the place tobacco kills 1.3 million individuals annually.

The businesses imagine content material descriptors — which warn customers with a label “smoking” in a video alongside its title at the beginning — have been more practical, IAMAI mentioned.

The “disruptions” attributable to warnings, the group mentioned, have been “problematic for creators that put in appreciable investments.”

All smoking and alcohol ingesting scenes in motion pictures in India’s cinemas and on TV, beneath legislation, require well being warnings, however there have been to this point no rules for the streaming giants.

In 2013, Woody Allen stopped his movie, Blue Jasmine, from being screened in India after studying that necessary anti-tobacco warnings could be inserted into its smoking scenes.

Sanjay Seth of non-profit Sambandh Well being Basis mentioned there ought to be no distinction in how smoking is discouraged in cinema, and on digital platforms.

“They need to implement this. It’s going to save lives,” Seth mentioned.

© Thomson Reuters 2023