Sources said that Netflix, Amazon, and Disney secretly discussed a legal challenge and other measures to delay India’s new smoke warning requirements on Friday, fearing they may need to censor millions of hours of web content.
Streaming giants in India, a booming market, face the latest backlash. Companies routinely self-censor content because it offends religious sentiment.
This Monday, India’s health government ordered streaming companies to put static health warnings during smoking scenes within three months as part of its anti-tobacco campaign. India also wants at least 50 seconds of anti-tobacco disclaimers, including an audio-visual, before and throughout each program.
In the first signs of industry distress, executives of the three global streaming companies and India’s Viacom18, which runs billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s JioCinema app, held a closed-door meeting where Netflix (NFLX.O) said the rules would hurt customer experience and force production houses to block their content in India, according to two sources.
One source said Indian executives contemplated a legal challenge to claim that the IT and information & broadcasting ministries, not the health ministry, have jurisdiction over streaming companies.
The corporations and India’s health ministry did not comment to Reuters. Reuters originally reported the industry’s response.
All smoking and alcohol-drinking sequences in movies in India’s cinemas and on TV require health warnings, but streaming giants, whose content is growing in popularity, have no such requirements.
After learning about mandated anti-tobacco warnings in smoking sequences, Woody Allen pulled Blue Jasmine from Indian theaters in 2013. India, the world’s second-largest tobacco producer, has passed new anti-tobacco laws, which activists applaud. India has strict cigarette pack warnings.
In March, public health organization Truth Initiative found cigarette imagery in 60% of the 15 most popular streaming shows for 15- to 24-year-olds, “effectively exposing 25 million young people to tobacco imagery” in 2021.
In India, Netflix, Amazon (AMZN.O), and Disney (DISN) offer popular Hindi programming that regularly features Bollywood actors smoking, which environmentalists believe promotes tobacco consumption.
Streaming giants want India, but executives worry about the commercial impact and greater expenses. In recent weeks, Ambani’s JioCinema has secured content partnerships with NBCUniversal and Warner Bros (WBD.O) to bring “Succession” and “The Office” to its platform.
Companies have millions of hours of content. So new and old content must be altered. Kaushik Moitra, partner of Bharucha & Partners, advises streaming and production companies.
The second source claimed Amazon and other corporations argued in the Friday conference that films cannot be edited in three months, prompting the industry to consult attorneys and send protest letters.
Dylan Mohan Gray, a documentary filmmaker directed “Fire in the Blood,” called the new Indian guidelines “harassment” because murder, conflict, and highly violent crime scenes were not restricted. “Smoking, which though certainly a serious public health problem, is both legal and a massive source of government revenue in this country,” he remarked.
