Individuals in India are struggling to obtain the long-lasting VLC Media Participant, with no official purpose launched to date. 

VideoLAN, the Paris-based firm behind the open-source video participant, confirmed that its official website has been blocked in India since February 13. 

The information was found when the location noticed a drop in visitors of 80% throughout the South Asia market, the corporate’s president and lead developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf informed TechCrunch (opens in new tab).

VLC Participant ban

“The weirdest [thing] is that some ISP are blocking it and a few should not. So why is that the case? Are some ISP not listening to the federal government?” wrote Kempf on the Hacker Information discussion board (opens in new tab). 

Customers who’ve already downloaded the media participant can hold utilizing it with none points because it would not should be related to any of their servers to operate. And, whereas VLC continues to be obtainable to obtain on Apple Retailer, Google Play and mirrored websites, folks would possibly want an India VPN to have the ability to accomplish that on its official website. 

VideoLAN is now asking for help on social media, hoping to have the ability to have some solutions to the matter. 

If you’re in India, please assist us. https://t.co/rOpIjlx0q9August 12, 2022

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Why has VLC Media Participant been banned?

As talked about above, the Indian authorities has to date failed to provide an official purpose for its determination. 

Digital rights advocacy group Web Freedom Basis confirmed in a tweet (opens in new tab) that the India Ministry of Electronics and IT responded to its inquiry on July 14 saying that “No info is offered.”

On the similar time, some experiences are speculating that the ban could also be as a result of hacker group Cicada – allegedly backed by the Chinese language authorities – utilizing a faux model of VLC Media Participant, amongst others purposes, to launch malware assaults. 

“VideoLAN are fairly apolitical (we solely combat in opposition to DRM and for open supply) and VLC is a pure software that may learn something,” mentioned Kempf. 

He additionally added that if that is the true motivation behind the ban, it could do extra hurt than good because it’s pushing customers to obtain their service by way of much less safe websites as an alternative. 

Specialists…Blocking the primary web site will simply push customers to weirder web sites, and due to this fact in the direction of shady variations of VLC.These specialists are incompetent… https://t.co/QNVQwh8HF2August 16, 2022

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VideoLAN mentioned that 10% of all VLC customers worldwide are primarily based in India. 

An increasing number of web customers are actually calling the India Ministry of Electronics and IT on social media to carry the ban. 

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