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1444 points feross | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.442s | source
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sudhirj ◴[] No.32641992[source]
We have this kind of censorship in India as well, even the in weirdly innocous places. In James Bond movies, and I think Gone Girl as well, scenes were by zooming into character's faces or just straight cuts.

This is probably the only reason I maintain a US iTunes accounts (used to have to buy gift cards from sketchy sites online to keep this going, but I recently discovered that my Indian Amex card works fine with a US address).

Also trivia for those who are wondering how cuts are made, at least for cinema content: all video and audio assets are usually sent to theatres in full, but there's an XML file called the CPL (composition playlist) that specifies which file is played from which to which frame / timestamp in what sequence. Pure cuts or audio censorship can be handled by just adding an entry to skip the relevant frames or timestamp, or by specifying a censor beep as the audio track for a particular time range.

https://cinepedia.com/packaging/composition/

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4m1rk ◴[] No.32646888[source]
I didn't expect India! Iran for sure does that too. The zoom part was kind of nostalgic :) they are getting better and better (just technically). They were even covering women bodies!

Shit load of money and resources for these nonesense censorships.

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1. anthropodie ◴[] No.32646963[source]
I'm from India and I have seen shows like BBT, HIMYM, Friends, etc,. dozen of times on different national televisions and then again on streaming platforms. I have not seen a single instance of censorship in these shows(except for subtitles replacing words like Fuck with ** on national television). I'm not saying we don't censor at all but it's definitely not as bad as this post or GP is saying.
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2. drraj32 ◴[] No.32647847[source]
Thanks for chiming in. I am really surprised to see the grand parent comment to be the top one on this thread. I guess facts don't come in the way here when people want to collect some brownie points by self-flagellating.
3. srvmshr ◴[] No.32716005[source]
In India, movies & shows that are shown in theaters and broadcast media are subject to Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). However majority of American sitcoms are OTT and hence still not under the purview of CBFC.

Let's not dwell too far for an example:) "Sacred Games" had enough sex, nudity and cussing - far more than average American sitcom