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China's 'Game of Thrones' Fans Try Torrents, VPNs For Uncensored Episodes (scmp.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the game-changers dept.

"Winter is coming for fans of the hit television series Game of Thrones, with the final season set to hit screens around the world after a near two-year hiatus," reports the South China Morning Post. There were 96 million views for a discussion about the show on China's Twitter-like platform Weibo.

"But those watching inside China are also bracing for the chill of censorship." In recent years, Chinese authorities have ramped up the pressure on the television and film industries to clean up content they deem vulgar or politically incorrect. This has led to some serious censorship of foreign productions. Recent examples include the removal of scenes of smashed heads and bare flesh from the American superhero film Logan, and the apparent manipulation of a scene in Oscar-winner The Shape of Water so that a naked woman is made to appear to be wearing clothes...

In a bid to get around the censorship, many Chinese Game of Thrones fans have turned to virtual private networks and torrent download websites to access unexpurgated versions of their favourite episodes.
Tencent Video holds the exclusive distribution rights for the show in China, leaving one Weibo user to post "I'm begging Father Tencent not to censor too much, thank you."

Another added "This censored version is not interesting. I would pay money to watch the uncut version."

18 of 47 comments (clear)

  1. Making some big withdrawals against... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...their Social Credit Scores.

    I am amazed anyone would have the shortsightedness to post comments like this under the current chinese regime. I mean holding views like 'I would like to see more nudity or violence' does not really factor in to the acceptable cultural and personal values that the current Chinese administration wishes to cultivate in its citizens. Perhaps these people are due for reeducation.

    1. Re:Making some big withdrawals against... by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      I have relatives who immigrated from China. Essentially there seems to be an unwritten contract between Chinese citizens and the Chinese gov't: "Keep our lives smooth and relatively prosperous, and we'll go ahead and let you run everything."

      Part of this viewpoint is the "village's big eyeball" of Chinese culture. (The name varies.) The typical village kept a collective eye on everybody; there was no real privacy. The village elders ran the show and everybody accepted that as long as there were no big problems, such as starvation.

      Contrast this to the USA where young couples generally left their original families to start their own farm: YOU ran the show, but had to do everything, including protect the land with your life on the line.

      The Chinese gov't is essentially an extension or scale-up of the "village's big eyeball" concept.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  2. I'm not in China by bobstreo · · Score: 1

    Once the "final" season is over, I guess I will probably binge the whole thing.

    I think I have the first seven seasons on my NAS someplace.

    I'm also kind of surprised nobody in China can buy the DVD/Blu-Rays, rip them and sell them in a nice open-air market like they do with everything else.

      In other words, article is claptrap.

    1. Re:I'm not in China by Calydor · · Score: 2

      China has well over a billion people. Just setting up a market stall in some little village in a province isn't going to provide all of China with uncensored episodes.

      --
      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    2. Re:I'm not in China by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Chinese fans release subtitles online. From what I can tell they are very high quality, and you can choose to have extras like characters names appear on screen when they are shown for the first time in an episode. I could actually do with that in English sometimes.

      I imagine GoT is widely pirated over there. Fibre gigabit internet is fairly common in cities, they haven't been installing any new copper for years.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    3. Re:I'm not in China by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      I'm sure there will be uncensored copies available at all the local DVD outlets in a few days, it takes time to download the show and burn it to sufficient copies of physical media.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    4. Re:I'm not in China by butchersong · · Score: 1

      I attempted this over the weekend. The first season didn't age all that well... the production quality just isn't what I was braced for when I started the show. I'm sure as it progresses that will improve.

    5. Re:I'm not in China by Lorens · · Score: 1

      Once the "final" season is over, I guess I will probably binge the whole thing.

      Same here. I had my credit card out, ready to buy it, and I tried three different places (reputable places! My country's exclusive distributor, my ISP/TV company, and HBO directly), but none of them wanted my money, for different reasons. So if they don't want my money... they're not getting it. I have friends who will buy the DVD set when it comes out, I'll just borrow it, nah.

  3. Finally! by rmdingler · · Score: 5, Funny

    We finally have conclusive evidence why Democracy is worth fighting for: The Shape of Water character is available to us uncensored, and more importantly, unclothed.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

    1. Re:Finally! by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      Actually TV in China, while heavily sanitized for violence and sex (not even cleavage is shown), is strangely horrific.

      For example they have a show about the how great the police are, your basic propaganda stuff. One regular feature is where they find people who where kidnapped as children and who are now young adults, and re-unite them with their families. On national TV. The first time they see their parents in maybe two decades and it's in front of an audience of millions. I guess it could be fake but half of them break down and can't even walk down the catwalk to press the button that opens the doors behind which their family is waiting, and the reactions seem pretty real.

      There is lots of other disturbing stuff too. They have one show where people basically beg for money. One guy was there with his daughter asking for money to cover her medical bills. He had gone away for work for a few months, leaving her with her mother. Her mother died and no-one noticed, and when he got home is daughter was unconscious from starvation. Apparently allowing them to beg for money on TV is the way they "help" people like that.

      And that's not to even mention the "secret news" that gets passed around on social media, which is often very graphic. I saw a photo of a father holding his son, whose head had been half crushed in some kind of traffic accident.

      So actually a lot of what happens in GoT, while more graphic than what gets shown on Chinese TV, is actually a lot closer to what sometimes happens in China than most Westerners would ever experience.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    2. Re:Finally! by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      I've been there too, and completely agree. Traffic safety is basically non-existent. People use their horns a lot, often when making ordinary manoeuvres, just to make sure everyone else is paying attention. Of course the problem is that people quickly start to tune the sound out.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  4. Translation. by msauve · · Score: 1

    "This censored version is not interesting. I would pay money to watch the uncut version."

    Translated, the above means "I'm not interested in the plotline, show me titties!"

    --
    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    1. Re:Translation. by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      In Taiwan, the real China people can enjoy arts and culture. From South Korea, Japan, the USA, UK.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    2. Re:Translation. by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      Have you even seen Netflix Japan, with most nudity blurred out? Even boobs can't be shown in Japan.

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    3. Re:Translation. by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      This prudish shit, coming from the land of tentacle porn and bukkake.

      Most of which is censored, if it actually comes from Japan anyway.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  5. Re: Chinese History by Evtim · · Score: 1

    It seems that most, if not all old stories have a moral that has to do with something unseemly about human nature.
    Rumplestillskin? Yhea, it is what you think it is (or was anyway).

  6. Re:Chinese History by butchersong · · Score: 1

    I don't believe that Hollywood has improved the state of culture of the US over the last 100 years. Any entertainment produced by a certain group of people is going to be propaganda for that culture's view of the word and if I were viewing the US from outside... there isn't really any chance I'd want my people exposed to unlimited downward spiral of debasement and misanthropy that is US entertainment.

  7. Re:You should try open rebellion instead. by butchersong · · Score: 1

    The "true" han are basically a mixture of ancient whites that populated much of China and mongolians. I have limited evidence for this but it's what my gut is telling me... and I trust my gut.