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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."
Okay, I can understand political and crime/legal dramas (wouldn't want people accidentally thinking they have legal rights). But tBBT?
What, does Putin happen to favor String Theory, and Sheldon's recent abandonment of it (oh BTW, spoilers, sweetie!) pushed him in to a prostitute-killing rage?
Yeah, one of those four doesn't quite make sense.
All terrible shows that the world could do without.
Less shit that the Chinese have to endure.
Or he will be piriated
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
rather than censoring. Only the Republicans like that crap that is on primetime TV. The rest of us are too busy living life to waste it away doing nothing except watching TV like a conservative. Their kind is so lazy, and it is good to see someone stand-up to them.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 :).
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.
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.
bash india more and we will reconsider.
-china
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.
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.
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.
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 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.