Netflix Is Now In China Via a Deal With iQiyi

randomErr writes: Last year, Netflix tried to go into China but ran into regulatory issues. So Netflix has entered into a licensing deal with iQiyi. iQiyi was founded in 2010 by Baidu in a very similar way that Google owns YouTube. What Netflix content will be shown and how the subscription service will work has yet to be announced.

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[gsmb]

in Chinese, it sounds like this: ee, chee, yee

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[gsmb]

correction, sounds like; eye, chee, yee

Eye Qi Eye Aye

[Megahard]

I am the Frito Bandito

Culture wars are coming

[Baron_Yam]

We're already having the opening skirmishes - you can see it in Hollywood where they're tailoring productions to be Chinese-friendly. Rewrite anything the Communist Party of China might find offensive before the script is considered complete, make sure the dialogue translates well.

But imagine a future in which all media is fully available (after the government censors apply their filters). Imagine you have a choice of seeing a Chinese movie (made in English for foreign consumption) over an American or British one, and the viewing fee is 90% lower. You go for it, the movie's fine... but without you even realizing it, you're absorbing Chinese culture. Their values, their imagery, fawning over their stars. Maybe even displacing your own.

Sounds like a silly thing to be concerned about, but on long enough time scales (like generations) that kind of propaganda works wonders, especially when it subtly presents their way as better. Sure, we're doing the same to them, but who has the bigger population, who can crank out new product for less money, more frequently?

I'm all for cultures mixing - picking up the best each has to offer and excising their own worst in the process - but if the flow is too one-sided that's not what happens. You get their best and worst replacing yours.

Something to think about, anyway.

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[Baron_Yam]

>And the world outside USA says "Go on, tell us more". Hollywood has been giving us overt US propaganda since the second world war...

As a Canadian, I'm somewhat aware of that, and in fact that's what led to my post in the first place.

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[Ryanrule]

China doesn't allow weed. No serious entertainment industry.

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[InfiniteZero]

Well that's how the "free" market is supposed to work. If they win out in the end, who are we to judge their culture isn't the better one? Food for thought, anyway.

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[Cindy Fahnestock-Schafer]

Netflix is more user friendly now with Comcast cable in the USA. Are they owned by one another? Ironically the search function is integrated with Comcast. So you search for a favorite movie to watch, and you think you are searching Comcast, but the "Ways to Watch" comes up telling you to watch on Netflix. At which time you must order the subscription. I am tending to think they are integrated and taking over the world. Maybe I am just this old, but television used to be free.

Netflix and chill gets a completely new meaning

[fubarrr]

When can we expect free Marxism lectures there?

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[jandersen]

When can we expect free Marxism lectures there?

Not any time soon, but you don't need them. Whether you believe it or not, you get practical lessons in what Marx wrote every day, from the rich, privileged, global upper class who sit on everything and control power from behind the scenes. Marx didn't think up a huge, revolutionary idea out of the blue - he wrote about what everybody could observe, and those same things are still clearly visible today. And before you jeer back at me, think about this: I'm not asking you to believe my words, I only hope tha