No. Certification by the Central Board of Film Certification exists under the Cinematograph Act 1952, and it governs films exhibited publicly — in cinemas. A film released online is not certified by the CBFC, and no certificate is required for it.
What applies online is Part III of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules 2021, and those duties sit on the publisher of online curated content — on a catalogue platform, usually the platform rather than the filmmaker. Instead of a certificate, that publisher self-classifies the film into an age rating, displays content descriptors, controls access to adult-rated content and runs a published grievance process. What stays with the filmmaker is that the rating and the warnings are honest. Festivals and television may still ask for a certificate. This is the position as at the date on this page and is worth re-checking; this page is not legal advice.
This is the whole answer, and almost every confused conversation about censorship and online release comes from mixing up two of these rows.
| Where it is shown | What governs it | What you have to do |
|---|---|---|
| A cinema, or any public exhibition | Cinematograph Act 1952; certification by the CBFC | Get the film certified before it is exhibited |
| A website or app with a catalogue — OTT, subscription, pay-per-view | IT Rules 2021, Part III (the Code of Ethics) | Self-classify, display descriptors, control access to adult content, publish a grievance route |
| A festival screening in India | Usually an exemption the organiser holds | Nothing certificated — the exemption is the organiser’s to describe |
| Cable or satellite television | Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act 1995 and the Programme Code | Whatever the broadcaster asks for; most ask for a certificate |
| A private link sent to a few people | Your contracts and your rights; generally not a public exhibition | Nothing certificated — but where a private screening becomes a public one is fact-specific |
We operate a pay-per-view platform, so the second row is the one we live in and the one we can describe from the inside. Everything below it we describe carefully and at a distance. None of this is legal advice. If the answer matters — money is committed, a broadcaster is involved, the content is contentious — pay a media lawyer for an hour of their time. It is the cheapest line item in your budget.
Take this before the list of obligations, because it decides whose list it is. Part III attaches to a “publisher of online curated content” — broadly, someone who curates and makes available a library of content as a systematic business or commercial activity. A platform running a catalogue is the obvious case. A filmmaker who made one film and sells tickets to it is not obviously that, and not obviously outside it either, and the answer may turn on facts about how you operate rather than on anything about the film.
One boundary in the Rules is clearer than that one. Their definition of a publisher of online curated content expressly excludes an intermediary — a service that merely enables users to reach material other people have uploaded. A video-sharing site where anyone posts their own videos is an intermediary, governed by Part II of the same Rules; a service that selects what it carries and sells access to it is the other thing. So uploading your own film to a video-sharing site is not the same act, legally, as putting it in somebody’s catalogue.
We are not going to resolve your own position for you, because we cannot. What we can say is what we actually do: we operate the catalogue, and the obligations that come with operating it are ours — a grievance officer named in India, published timelines we hold ourselves to, a report-this-film route on every film page, and acting on a court order or a notification from an appropriate government agency. Where we do not meet the Code of Ethics in the form it is written, we would rather say so than let a general compliance claim stand: it asks for a reliable age-verification mechanism in front of adult-rated content and parental controls above U/A 13+, and we implement neither. What we have is a recorded declaration at checkout, and no viewer accounts for parental controls to attach to. What stays with you is the film: that you hold the rights in it, that the rating and the warnings you give us are honest, and any obligation that attaches to you rather than to the service. If you also publish the same film elsewhere, on your own site or a channel you run, your own position there is worth checking.
Here is what the Rules ask of whoever the publisher is. They replace a certificate you apply for with obligations carried continuously; that sounds lighter than certification and in one sense is, but a certificate is a single event and this is not.
The Rules set out their own classification scheme, and it is not the one you may have in your head from a cinema ticket. The categories are U, U/A 7+, U/A 13+, U/A 16+ and A. The Schedule to the Rules lists the factors to classify against: themes and messages, violence, nudity, sex, language, drug and substance use, and horror. You apply them to your own film and record the result. Nobody approves it in advance.
A rating on its own tells a viewer very little. The Rules require the classification and the descriptors that explain it to be displayed prominently — at the start of the film, and where someone is deciding whether to watch it. A descriptor is the specific reason for the rating, which is what a parent or a viewer with a reason to avoid something actually needs.
The Code of Ethics asks a publisher to put a reliable age-verification mechanism in front of content classified A, and to offer parental controls for content rated U/A 13+ and above. This is the obligation this platform is furthest from meeting in the form it is written, which is why the section before this one says plainly what we do instead of leaving it to be inferred, and why the section after it says what a declaration at checkout does and does not achieve.
A publisher has to appoint a grievance officer in India, publish that person’s name and contact details, acknowledge complaints and dispose of them within the timelines the Rules set. Above the publisher the Rules build further levels: a self-regulatory body of publishers, and an oversight mechanism under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, which can reach a decision a publisher has refused. The Rules also require publishers to furnish details of their entity to the Ministry. Ours is published on our grievance redressal page, with the clocks we hold ourselves to.
When you upload, you pick an age rating and tick a content-warning checklist — violence, sexual content, nudity, strong language, substance use, tobacco, self-harm, flashing images, disturbing scenes — and you may add a note in your own words. Our form offers four bands, which is the Rules’ scheme without the U/A 7+ step: all ages for U, 13+ and 16+ for U/A 13+ and U/A 16+, and 18+ for A. Classify against the Schedule’s factors and, where a film sits between two of our bands, pick the nearer one up rather than down. Both the rating and the warnings appear on the film’s page, above the button that starts a purchase, so nobody reaches payment without passing them — which is also the cheapest way there is to avoid a refund request. A closed checklist rather than free text, because a viewer who needs to avoid one of these has to be able to find it in the same place every time. There is more on what to have ready in what you need before you upload.
Tobacco is the one box on that list with a statute behind it, and the instrument for an online release is not the one most pages cite. The health spots, the audio-visual disclaimers and the static warnings have to be in the video; for online content the operative provision is rule 11 of the 2004 rules made under COTPA, inserted by the amendment rules of 2023, which reach publishers of online curated content. The amendment rules of 2012 changed those same 2004 rules for films and television programmes — so a reader who checks only the 2012 rules will not find the duty that applies to them. Note also where the duty lands: on the publisher displaying the content, which is to say on us. We cannot re-encode your file, so ticking that box asks you to confirm separately that the spots and disclaimers are already embedded, and the film cannot be submitted for review until you do.
On an adult-rated film, the trailer on the film page will not load until a visitor declares their age, and the purchaser declares it again at checkout. We record that the declaration was made and when. We do not verify it, and we do not claim to age-gate adult content generally. Two reasons to be blunt about that. A declaration is not verification — if you are publishing content where real age-verification matters, that is a question for your lawyer and not something a tickbox settles. Concretely: if your film is one where the wrong viewer is a real harm rather than a bad review, do not sell it here. We have nothing stronger than a declaration and a bearer link, and no roadmap that changes that. And the link is bearer authority by design: whoever holds it can start the film. What a ticket buys is exact — 1 complete playthrough, 1 stream at a time, inside a 12-hour window that starts at first play rather than at purchase — so a link passed around ten people is not ten viewings, but the declaration binds the person who paid and nobody the link reaches after them. That is a deliberate trade for a platform with no viewer accounts, and it is a cost as well as a feature.
Festivals in India generally screen films under an exemption their organiser holds rather than asking every filmmaker for a certificate — but this varies, some ask for certification outright, and the requirement is the festival’s to state. Ask them in writing, early, and ask in whose name any exemption runs. Note also that a festival may have rules about premieres that an online release breaks even when certification is not an issue; the sequencing matters more than the paperwork, and where to release your film goes into it.
If a broadcaster picks the film up, that is a different regime again: the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act 1995 and the Programme Code under it, plus whatever the channel’s own compliance team requires, which in practice usually includes a certificate.
And if the film gets a theatrical run later, certification is a process you go through then. The CBFC certifies films of every length on application under the Cinematograph Act 1952 — features and short films alike — and plenty of films first released elsewhere carry a certificate obtained later for a theatrical run, a broadcaster or a festival that asked for one. What is true is only that no certificate is required for an online release and there is no certification route for online release as such; releasing online first does not use up the option. Worth knowing: the Cinematograph (Amendment) Act 2023 revised the certificate categories into age-based sub-categories and added provisions aimed at unauthorised recording and exhibition — so if you go down that road, check the current position rather than a decade-old blog post about it.
No CBFC certificate for an online release; that is the Cinematograph Act 1952 and it is about cinemas. Online, the film is classified by its publisher under the IT Rules 2021, with the rating and the descriptors shown where people decide whether to watch — and on this platform we carry the grievance machinery and take an age declaration at checkout, a declaration rather than verification, with exactly what that does and does not achieve set out further up this page. Festivals and television have their own requirements and you should ask them directly. Take all of it as at the date at the top of this page: whether online releases ought to be certified is argued over periodically, and it is the claim here most likely to change, so check the current position before you rely on it. We have described the law as we understand it and our own practice exactly; we are not lawyers, the rules change, and anything that matters is worth an hour with one who works on media.
Published by Sajai Digital, which operates watchmycreation. We describe how our own platform works and what Indian law requires of it; this is not legal, tax or financial advice, and rates and rules change. Check anything that matters with a professional. Something wrong on this page? Write to support@watchmycreation.com and we will fix it.