India’s Ministry of Electronics and IT has eliminated a ban towards the official web site of common media participant utility VLC Media Participant that was instigated in February 2022.

As reported by TechCrunch (opens in new tab), the announcement of the ban being lifted got here not from the ministry, however from New-Delhi primarily based advocacy group Web Freedom Basis (IFF), which supplied the builders of VLC, VideoLan, with “authorized help”.

The lifting of the ban might mark an finish to the saga, though VideoLAN will little question proceed trying to find solutions round a debacle that the corporate claims might have damaged Indian legislation.

VideoLAN’s VLC ban response

It’s unclear whether or not VideoLAN submitting a authorized discover through the IFF final month, demanding a response from the Indian authorities, had any bearing on proceedings. 

In it, VideoLAN claimed that, in accordance with India’s 2009 IT Blocking Guidelines, the federal government was legally required to supply a cause for the ban. Though the ban is not in place, it most definitely nonetheless is. 

As a part of the discover, VideoLAN requested a good listening to to dispute the ban, and though that’s not essential, the corporate should still really feel aggrieved and resolve to provoke authorized proceedings.

One other weird implication of the ban is that it appears to go towards the Indian authorities’s pledge to make use of open-source software program as a part of the continued Digital India initiative.

The ban itself was superficial, and simply circumvented by a VPN, because it solely utilized to the web site the place VLC is accessible, videolan.org (opens in new tab). 

Nevertheless, VideoLAN president and lead VLC developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf has beforehand informed TechCrunch (opens in new tab) that the ban, launched by a number of web service suppliers (ISPs), was damaging to VLC’s popularity, in addition to to new customers, as a result of they might have been pushed to web sites that host probably compromised variations of VLC.

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