Netflix, Disney, Amazon to challenge India tobacco rules: Report

Streaming giants Netflix, Amazon and Disney privately discussed a potential legal challenge and other ways to thwart India’s new tobacco warning rules on Friday amid fears they will have to edit millions of hours of existing web content, Reuters reports citing sources. who are familiar with the discussions.

The pushback is the latest headache for streaming giants in India, a top growth market. Companies often face lawsuits and complaints from police that their content sometimes harms religious sentiments, and many have self-censored content over the years.

As part of India’s anti-tobacco crackdown, the Health Ministry this week ordered streaming platforms to post static health warnings during smoking scenes within three months. India also wants at least 50 seconds of anti-tobacco disclaimers, including an audiovisual, at the beginning and middle of each program.

At the first signs of industry turmoil, executives from the three global streaming companies and India’s Viacom18, which runs billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s JioCinema app, held a meeting behind closed doors, where Netflix said the rules would hurt customer experience and production houses would prompt their content in India, according to two sources familiar with the discussions.

Executives in India also discussed ways of a possible legal challenge to claim that other ministries — IT and information and broadcasting — have power over streaming giants, not the Health Ministry, one of the sources said.

The companies and the Indian Ministry of Health did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

All smoking and drinking scenes in films in Indian cinemas and on TV already require health warnings by law, but until now there have been no rules for the streaming giants, whose content has become increasingly popular.

In 2013, Woody Allen stopped showing his movie, Blue Jasmine, in India after learning that mandatory no-tobacco warnings would be inserted into the smoking scenes.

Activists have welcomed new anti-tobacco regulations by India, the world’s second-largest producer of tobacco, which kills 1.3 million people every year in the country. India also has strict warning rules on cigarette packs.

Health warnings or ‘harassment’?

Truth Initiative, a public health nonprofit, said in March that 60 percent of the 15 most popular streaming programs among 15- to 24-year-olds it analyzed contained images of tobacco, “effectively exposing 25 million youth to tobacco images by 2021 “. .

But in India, companies from Netflix to Amazon to Disney also have popular Hindi content that often features Bollywood actors smoking, something activists say encourages tobacco use.

India is a hot market for streaming giants and executives fear the business impact and higher costs. Ambani’s JioCinema has signed multiple content deals with NBCUniversal and Warner Bros in recent weeks, bringing popular shows, such as Succession and The Office, to its platform.

Together, the companies have millions of hours of content.

“New content that is created needs to be changed and old content needs to be modified. It may be necessary to insert an ad type warning in between,” said Kaushik Moitra, partner at Bharucha & Partners who advises streaming companies and production houses.

At Friday’s meeting, Amazon and other companies made it clear that there is no way to edit films in three months, the second source said, adding that the industry decided to consult lawyers and write letters of protest.

Dylan Mohan Gray, a filmmaker who has directed documentaries such as Fire in the Blood, said the new Indian rules amount to “harassment”, saying murder, war and extremely violent crime scenes were not regulated in the same way.

“Smoking, while certainly a serious public health problem, is both legal and a huge source of government revenue in this country,” he said.