[IMC Bombay] on censorship of films

[Vickram Crishna]

At 7:46 AM +0000 24/08/2002, shammi nanda wrote:
>When I had mentioned about the pornography that is available on the 
>net, I was not assuming that censor board is supposed to check it. 
>It was in the context that censor board is a part of the government 
>which is keen on censoring any form of explicit sexuality on screen.

Actually, to the best of my knowledge, the Board is not a part of the 
government, it is supposed to be autonomous and play the role of an 
overseer. The inability of the Board to maintain a meaningful 
standard is already widely debated.

We should rather debate how to help the Board be more effective, by 
empaneling a larger and more representative group on the one hand, 
and by reducing through self-regulation the scope of the task it is 
set, on the other.

And maybe by actively calling for a Board that is not subject to the 
extra-official interference of our (now by ordinance) uneducated 
legislative leaders.

>Besides we should know that government is not so ignorant and its 
>not so simple that by our discussing pornography on the Internet, 
>the government will think of censoring it.

That is not what I said, and if that is how it read, then let me 
rephrase it: The Censor Board should not have any role to play in the 
availability of information through the Internet.

>Also, it does not make much of a distinction in the fact that 
>internet is an individual experience and has laws for internet too, 
>however it may harder to implement it due to the nature of the 
>medium.

My point was that I do not want anyone to think that the Internet is 
a form of public entertainment that should be subject to the eye of a 
Censor Board, whether this one or any other.

>According to the Indian Information Technology Act 2000 , Chapter XI 
>Para 67, the Government of India clearly considers online 
>pornography as a punishable offence.

Correct. I also believe that these crimes have their own laws and 
rules and regulations governing their prevention, and comparisons 
between such widely different media are not sustainable.

>The issue of pornography is a very complex one.

Yes. We now have a situation in Britain where a teaching assistant 
has allegedly assisted her boyfriend to kidnap (subsequently murder) 
two young girls. To confuse such crimes with pornography is 
insidious. These things are often done by a media that is hungry for 
news, and when the news is not sensational enough, it is made to be 
so.

We ourselves participate in this lowering of values. If the news in 
print is not exciting enough for a second look, we switch on the tv, 
where everything is dumbed down for the 20 second bite.

I hope this discussion list will debate this issue from time to time, 
not because it is entirely new, but because successive generations of 
journalists need to have values renewed periodically. Writing is 
tough, but looking back on rubbish one has written in the past simply 
because of lack of knowledge/ exposure/ renewal is much tougher 
(change active words to include film/television/photography media).

When this list was proposed, there was a huge debate on how the issue 
of (editing) information publishing should be handled. Why? One 
reason being that no matter how liberal and open one wants to be, 
there are laws governing the publishing of information within the 
borders of nation-states, and falling unwittingly afoul of them 
merely makes life difficult for all the participants, even those who 
may have no connection with the so-called offending item.

As far as the government is concerned (not all the government, but 
the laws make it possible for a few venal types to create havoc), 
allegedly guilty publishers are called upon to prove their innocence, 
not the other way around.
-- 
Vickram