CBFC Chief Prasoon Joshi welcomes Centre's guidelines for OTT platforms and social media

Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) chairman Prasoon Joshi on Thursday welcomed the new guidelines by the Centre for news publishers, over-the-top (OTT) platforms and digital media. Joshi highlighted how the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY)'s new rules for social media intermediaries, stakeholders, including internet companies and public policy groups "provides clarity."

"Measures taken for a level playing field and empowering consumers would provide clarity for content creators of emerging platforms. Responsible and accountable mechanisms will only bring in more quality and maturity in a commercial creative industry. Initiative by MIETY @MIB_India to balance business interest of digital, SM platform & empowering users provides clarity. In a commercial industry even a creatively commercial one-if the audiences’ share of wallet is asked for, their share of voice needs to be taken cognisance of," Joshi wrote on Twitter.

Will OTT platforms have to come under CBFC censorship?

The answer to this, as per the I&B Minister's reply to a journalist's question, was that even on OTT platforms, TV programming content would come under the Programming code, and that films would not yet come under the CBFC, rather self-classification would be the way forward.

While answering media questions, Prakash Javadekar further clarified: "OTT platforms were repeatedly asked to form self-regulation rules, just like how TV has done in the past. But to no avail. Hence we decided to create an institutional mechanism for all media. There is a Censor board for films but nothing for OTT. For OTT, there should be self-classification of content -- 13+, 16+ and A categories. There has to be a mechanism of the parental lock. The ethics code of the Censor Board will remain common for everyone."

On being asked for a clarification on parental locks, Javadekar also provided more information on whether OTTs would come under some pre-existing code or censorship rules. He said, "I had asked for meetings twice with OTT platforms. After the first meeting, they didn’t come up with anything. Post the second meeting, and after waiting for six months, we decided to have an institutional mechanism. For films, we have CBFC, for TV we have programme code (BCCC), but we have nothing for the OTT. The same programme code (that is for TV) will be followed for OTT platforms. We are not bringing censorship to films on OTT. We are trusting the platforms to bring age-based classifications themselves."

Centre releases guidelines & ethics code for OTT platforms, digital media & online news

Centre to release OTT platform guidelines; tentative rules for Netflix, Hotstar & co here