Slashdot Mirror
China Censors "The Big Bang Theory" and Other Streaming Shows
dryriver (1010635) writes in with news that the Chinese government has had enough of the antics of doctor Sheldon Lee Cooper. "Chinese authorities have ordered video streaming websites in the country to stop showing four popular American TV shows, including The Big Bang Theory and The Good Wife, senior staff from two sites said Sunday. The move suggests government attention is intensifying on the online streaming industry, which is freer than state television and China's cinemas to show foreign productions and other content and has stretched the boundaries of what can be seen in the country. A spokeswoman for a leading online video site, Youku, said it had received notification on Saturday not to show sitcom The Big Bang Theory, political and legal drama The Good Wife, crime drama NCIS and legal drama The Practice."
All terrible shows that the world could do without.
China. Not Russia. Yes, I am a fucking moron.
:)
But I ninja'd all the haters who will now repeat this correction, at least.
Less shit that the Chinese have to endure.
The road to first post is plagued with face plants.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
This was the Chinese, Putin is in Russia. RTFA.
They're such a large market, though, so will we see television programmers tipping to the Chinese government's caveat?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
From CBS blocking me from watching it in the UK?
BaZinga!
And poutine is in Québec.
Putin does not control China
yet
It's a good first step, but the ban should be wider and reach all the "I'm so nerdy XD" bullshit.
Just goes to show that even censorship can have an upside.
no China trip this year.
China wants to prudently judge what foreign influences it allows into the country and doesn't want its young people to grow up to become daggitybos like some of the people who watch (and act in) The Big Bang Theory. Are we to be surprised that a state looks out for its citizens?
You seem to assume that all Chinese censorship is purely politically motivated. The Big Bang Theory probably just fails basic quality control standards.
China is much more concerned about "cultural contamination", not just political contamination. While the Chinese are Communists, they are not the hyper-political communists of the Soviet Union where culture such as religion and traditions were a plague to be eradicated, they are Communists with an eye towards preserving their very ancient culture.
The Chinese Ministry of Culture reports a 3-point increase in the average urban IQ.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Excellent movie, but it was missing almost all references to the banking system and TARP funds. For example, the entire scene at the end, where Derek Jeter hands them documents regarding banking fraud (their "next case"), was cut. The info graphics credits sequence omitted everything but the Ponzi scheme part (but it wasn't just cut off after that; the credits continued with the part after the info graphics). You can view the sequence on Youtube, but that's not complete either: It's missing the AIG and TARP bits.
So China bans Big Bang Theory. What is being hidden from you?
tBBT shows enough pure unadulterated American freedom that is in conflict with sanitized state controlled media.
China isn't the only country whose govts are pissed with pure uncensored internet freedom. Even my Brazil "democracy" has tried to police twitter, facebook, google plus to censure critics of politicians specially right before elections. Remember Turkey has banned twitter and facebook.
Realize that without serious state controlled media, China will fracture into dozens of states. It's internal language, cultural and social disparities rival only the former USSR.
China invented the technique of legalism back in (259 BC – 210 BC) when "China Qin Shi Huang" gave his name to his country, in the past having even censured attempts to use history against current rulers.
American companies stream movies to China. ... I would like to have an uproar that we are forced to pirate movies because they get published here (in Europe) months if not years after they were made ... ...
But they don't do the same thing to Europe (Game of Thrones as an example).
How is that even billed? And now we have an uproar that China is censoring it.
Wow
I'm fed up with movies/books being available in Europe months or years after they where made, for what ever reason
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
China is much more concerned about "cultural contamination", not just political contamination. While the Chinese are Communists, they are not the hyper-political communists of the Soviet Union where culture such as religion and traditions were a plague to be eradicated, they are Communists with an eye towards preserving their very ancient culture.
OOOOOhhhh!!! (light goes on)
NOW I understand why Sheldon Cooper is such a threat.
No, actually not really. I'm even more fucking confused over BBT being part of this censorship...
Maybe because early episodes alluded to Leonard having a brief relationship with Joyce Kim, who turned out to be a North Korean spy...
Received notification on Saturday not to show ... crime drama NCIS
So, not all bad news then.
It's nice to see China setting a positive example in the human rights department for once.
Three CBS and one ABC. Production companies don't align either.
The shows themselves may not be objectionable, keep in mind. It may be payback or threat for other things, movies or something. In Iron Man 3, it's probable The Mandarin was converted from an evil actual Chinese guy to a lame cover story so as to not offend lest that and future movies be banned...or taxed extra hard.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
tBBT shows enough pure unadulterated American freedom that is in conflict with sanitized state controlled media.
Yes, because a bunch of math nerds sitting around on a couch every Friday night arguing about Star Trek is EXACTLY what every frat house in America is also doing on Friday night...
If THAT is "pure unadulterated American freedom", then WE should be looking to censor our own shit out of embarassment.
IIRC they did an episode where Chinese researchers apparently faked scientific results synthesizing a super heavy element. In episode before that said Chinese researchers claimed that this discovery was the greatest thing besides of the communist party, and one of the main characters of the show said that the communist party made them say that.
Perhaps this was enough to cross the line.
The Big Bang Theory is hugely popular among young people in China. It's one of the most famous American TV shows there, and it is (was) very widely circulated. There are many jokes they don't really "get," but they still really like it.
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
Hopefully we can get China to censor Big Bang Theory here in the U.S. too.
Maybe in the past, but the more we centralize everything, the more censorship-tolerant (and surveillance-tolerant) the internet becomes.
It needs to move to p2p, strongly encrypted communication. If it doesn't, it will die under the force of organizations that don't want freedom of communication.
Dude, TBBT is a shit show. You need to protect your young ones from the lame lines that come out of these puppets. Just like Friends.
I think they censored it for the terrible laugh track.
So it's censored in China. What makes it news here? What and whose propaganda machine is rolling this out?
The Big Bang Theory started off well, but has been progressively dumbed down for US audiences, a fate that befalls most science-related fiction. Thank goodness for the Canadians, who have a more complex sense of humour and can tolerate something other than sickly-sweet, mediocre-ness.
I think it was more likely to be the idea that a bunch of technical workers is depicted as affording to live outside of a company dorm.
So THAT's why nobody watches MSNBC. I was wondering about that.
I wish Australia would ban these shows too, then maybe the free-to-air stations might have to get off their lazy arses and make some decent home-grown shows instead. It's no wonder the commercial channels are dying out here - lazy content, too many adverts far too often, horrible cheap-and-nasty titling graphics, constant pop-ups. It's unwatchable. They don't get it, and the sooner they die the better. Or they could, you know, improve.
...zinga!!!!!
Note that banned does not mean it's hard to find. It just means the government won't let companies make large profits off of it. You can easily walk down the street and find all kinds of banned items for sale in China from books to video games. They just won't be in Wal-mart anymore. People will just load up Baidu and search for it. The quality won't be as good as Qiyi, Sohu TV, or what not... but people will still easily watch it.
A satire based on nerd and intellectual culture shows pure unadulterated American freedom?
You are free to imagine this, but beyond that your freedom is largely imaginary.
Hang on a moment, what streaming service with bbt is legally accessible in china?
I still have to get these on the BitTorrent channel.
I suspect it's more like a form of protectionism. They can't slap some serious tariffs due to WTO or whatever. So in order to protect fledgling local production they do a form of bang-bang control: now you can watch that and now you can't.
...they were only trying to cut out the parts that weren't funny.
"... when "China Qin Shi Huang" gave his name to his country ..."
Someone should have suggested to the emperor that he could actually name the whole country after himself. I imagine he would have been very pleased. Of course, he would have had to come up with a name that wasn't based on Indo-European languages. Maybe a cursory look at Wikipedia on the etymology of China is in order.
When it comes to language disparities, I think India at least equals China with its hundreds of languages and cultures. And manages to be relatively democratic, if highly flawed and still prone to some censorship.
This space intentionally left blank
One is that they do a pretty good job portraying various kinds of geeks. Since it is a comedy it makes light of unflattering and silly characteristics that those geeks have. Well, many people can't laugh at themselves. Real life Sheldon Coopers can't laugh at themselves any more than the character can, and thus the character would be something they don't like.
Another is jealousy. The characters on the show have generally had a good deal of success in love, despite being geeky, with very pretty women. This is something that many of the real life geeks on Slashdot do not share. Hence, there is jealousy of the characters.
Finally there is the hipster-ish anti-pop culture thing. That somehow, if something is popular, it can't be good. For many geek, part of the identity is being an outcast, being different, and liking different things. So liking something mainstream won't do at all for them, not because they don't actually like it but because it would conflict with their self identity.
Personally, I think it is hilarious. Not quite as good as the IT Crowd, but I enjoy it and it makes me laugh regularly. Being that it is a comedy, that is all I can ask :).
Perhaps China could become a democracy and stay a single country. I hope it could.
But for as long as it's a dictatorship, I have less than zero respect for that country. Same for Cuba, North Korea, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and many other de facto dictatorships like Russia,Venezuela,Equador. Oh the curse of having lots of Oil.
Simple.
The show shows It's fun being an American. Maybe China doesn't like that?
and poontang is everywhere
I keep thinking that Big Bang Theory is the prevailing cosmological model for the early development of the universe. The key idea is that the universe is expanding. The Big Bang model suggests that at some moment all matter in the universe was contained in a single point, which is considered the beginning of the universe. Modern measurements place this moment at approximately 13.82 billion years ago, which is thus considered the age of the universe.
But in reality, the Big Bang Theory is an American sitcom created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, both of whom serve as executive producers on the show along with Steven Molaro.
Except Slashdot.
It's not Chinese. If you haven't studied it, it's hard to explain.
If you disagree, it's too late for you.
Big Bang Theory is terrible, and the rest are awful at best. Good Guy Chinese Government is saving their people from shitty shows.
"paved", roads are paved.
Doesn't the show feature an unmarried couple living together?
Some censors don't like stuff like that.
Good luck with that, Vlad.
Compare China's GDP to Russia's sometime. I don't think Vlad will be annexing any chunks of China any time soon. China's army is just a teensy bit bigger than Ukraine's.
Qin Shi Huang is an alias used in history texts. His name is Ying Zhen, where Ying is the family name. Qin was the name of a state before it became a dynasty, and that name was derived from the name of the land on which the state was founded, a long time before Qin Shi Huang.
bash india more and we will reconsider.
-china
Quite right. After all, who's want to live in a country controlled by a small group of elites.
If such a thing happens, then the CIA would start funding separatist movements, political parties, Chinese "springs" and demonstrations, antinuclear NGOs (to make the country dependent on foreign oil and so a slave of American/Arab companies)...
NCIS actually suggests China is in bed with Terrorists at some points. Nothing too explicit, basically "Ooh didya know the Chinese are making all the oil money off the deaths of our American brothers fighting for Iraqi freedom?"
I'm not sure what else, but I'm sure there's accusations of chinese espionage or sabotauge in episodes as well. I haven't seen too much of it, I only watch it for the silly looking goth lab scientist.
tBBT is quite rude in places. A repeated episode I saw last week had Penny suggesting that she was picked up by a guy in a bar, who then picked up another girl and they went off to have a threesome. Or Sheldon worrying Leonard about Penny being hypnotised by a male friend to 'make her think she's a chicken pecking seed' (moving his head back and forward). If you listen carefully, there are a lot of pretty close-to-the-knuckle lines like this.
I have no problems with this, but am surprised it's so regularly repeated in the daytime here in the UK. Maybe it's because they don't swear? Perhaps that says a lot about the real concerns of censors.
This road, however, is also plagued.
Copyright is a legal right to monopoly on the distribution of certain media (intellectual property). If they choose to advertise but not release then they are within their legal rights, and those that infringe copyright are disrespecting these rights.
Don't get me wrong, I believe that copyright law itself is unethical, but under no circumstances does your scenario "force" people to infringe copyright. If you don't like the effective censorship, then resist copyright in it's totality rather than being a hypocrite.
Doesn't the show feature an unmarried couple living together?
Who? Not since Howard left Raj to move in with his wife.
Only real roads are paved. Metaphorical roads, such as the road to first post, can't support pavement therefore they are instead 'plagued'.
Thank you come again.
So they are basically like the Taliban and the French and the..[insert radicals of many nations, with the Eddie Murphy voice].
While the Chinese are Communists, they are not the hyper-political communists of the Soviet Union
The relatively practical Soviets were annoyed by the political zeal of the East Germany. That tells you something about the state and the role of the Chinese communism.
They're preventing a massive loss in Chinese productivity from people trying to figure out how an out-of-work actress (subbing as a waitress) seems to live in an apartment that's the same size as the one that two reasonably accomplished university scientists share, even though apparently "lesser" fellows live in apartments on their own.
On the one hand, maybe waitresses earn a lot of money in America? She can afford a big apartment no problem. Or maybe scientists don't earn very much? After all the building can't be all that great because the lift never works. Or maybe she's being bank-rolled by some family member? Or perhaps the government pays some sort of welfare to potential actresses? Or maybe the scientists spend all their money on their geek toys and so don't have much left for rent, so aren't very good at mathematics and home-finances?
tBBT shows enough pure unadulterated American freedom that is in conflict with sanitized state controlled media.
Yes, because a bunch of math nerds sitting around on a couch every Friday night arguing about Star Trek is EXACTLY what every frat house in America is also doing on Friday night...
If THAT is "pure unadulterated American freedom", then WE should be looking to censor our own shit out of embarassment.
depends on what fraternity you're in
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
Just that episode explains why I love Big Bang Theory, it is so much fun to laugh at yourself! Maybe I'm just not geeky enough to get offended?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Or maybe she's failing at paying her bills and often has her boyfriends loan her the money to pay them? (The actual reason given in the show).
All the Chinese ones.
Not really. In fact, The State Media (CCTV) itself is in the process of translating The Big Bang Theory and releasing it in mainland China , and that is probably the real reason for this ban. IOW this isn't about censorship at all, this is simply using the censorship tool to protect the (incompetant) state media from competition by the more competant private media streaming companies.
Considering China's on/off relationship with North Korea I wonder if this is a response to the episode about Leonard dating the North Korean spy - http://bigbangtheory.wikia.com...
My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
dear lord, i would love that every CSI-like show to be censored in any country
perhaps this way we would get rid of those clients from hell who think that any image can be zoomed and enhanced to HD level
"life is a joke, and someone is laughing at me"
Bazinga. Of course I am.
Also, Coitus.
I live in Brazil. Brazil is a democracy, since we can vote, and we can criticize anybody without fear of being arrested or singled out by the govt.
Perhaps you should understand the basic pillars of a true democracy:
1 - Freedom of the press
2 - Freedom of peaceful assembly
3 - Freedom of expression
4 - Right to private property
5 - Right to a fair trial
Many countries are controlled by a fairly small political elite, but are subject to the 5 above rules, even though the political elite doesn't quite do what the people want. It's still a democracy. Questionably even Brazil, USA, and some european countries are in that category.
But in the countries I singled out, all of those liberties are only real as long as you don't offend the political powers. Criticize the Chinese or Russian govt to hashly and you will be arrested, subject to a rigged trial and thrown in filthy prisons to rot away.
It's very useful to study the thinkings and sayings of the French and American revolutions. If you haven't studied both you can't call yourself a properly educated man. My Brazil teaches the French revolution but ignores the wealth of knowledge from the American one. Too capitalist for the taste of the ones in control of our education system.
I dunno why China would want to censor NCIS. It depicts an armed federal agency violating the law and the Constitution with astonishing regularity and effectively with impunity (the Season 10 cliffhanger ending notwithstanding). From illegal wiretaps to illegal tracking to outright extrajudicial killings, it makes a mockery of law and order in the US. The Chinese government should be delighted.