The plea to impose censorship regulations on Netflix, Amazon, and Prime Video is denied by the LHC.

A petition to regulate movies on Netflix, Amazon, Prime Video, and other websites under the Censor Board’s drafted laws was denied by the Lahore High Court (LHC) on Saturday.

According to Justice Raheel Kamran Sheikh, streaming services like Netflix and Amazon upload millions of hours of video per hour. There is now no legislation that permits such control, and it is very challenging to filter such a large amount of content before publication.

The petitioner had asked that the Motion Picture Ordinance be applied to these platforms; however, the court rejected the petition, ruling that it was unlawful.

In response to the private company’s plea, Justice Sheikh wrote a 20-page ruling. The petitioners own permits to exhibit movies and run movie theaters in Pakistan, the judge observed. They argued that movies produced on websites and social media platforms should also be subject to the Motion Picture Ordinance of 1979, which was created to monitor and regulate film content.

According to the ruling, the Motion Picture Ordinance of 1979 was created especially for movies that were screened in theaters and predates the digital age. Its goals were to offer the audience with clean entertainment and to regulate content before it was shown on screen. Social media websites and Netflix are exempt from this regulation as they weren’t around when it was passed.

Justice Sheikh added that issues pertaining to the Censor Board have become provincial in nature after the Constitution’s 18th Amendment. Since then, each province has enacted its own Motion Picture Act and included provisions pertaining to stage productions, dramas, and television series. Nevertheless, no province has changed the legislation to cover movies that are made available on social media. The modified acts would have made specific reference to social media and streaming services if such was the lawmakers’ intention.

According to the ruling, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and comparable services function in essentially different ways. They use the internet to operate and use smartphones and other digital devices to deliver content on demand. The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), which has the power to remove unlawful content on its own initiative under the PECA Act (Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act), can also remove content that is anti-state or against Islamic teachings.

The court added that one of the main obstacles is that it is hard to eliminate just particular information; frequently, blocking entire websites is necessary. This problem is not exclusive to Pakistan; it affects nations all across the world.

As a result, the court determined that it is illegal to apply the Motion Picture Ordinance to websites such as Netflix and Amazon. Consequently, the petition was dismissed and deemed inadmissible.