Monitor News Desk
VLC Media Player banned in India: The popular media player VLC Media Player has been banned in India. The company has now confirmed the same. The president of VideoLAN has also acknowledged the ban reports and said that the media player is working on some ISPs, but not on others.
Several questions emerge at this point: why is the VLC Media player website and download link blocked in India suddenly? And what is the company or the Indian government saying on the matter? Let’s answer all these questions.
Why is VLC Media Player banned in India?
The developer of VLC Media Player, VideoLAN, has officially confirmed the ban that almost no one noticed. The ban was first reported by MediaNama nearly two months ago. The official reason behind the ban hasn’t been revealed yet. Some reports, though, suggest that VLC Media Player has been banned in the country because the platform was used by China-backed hacking group Cicada for cyber attacks. Just a few months ago, security experts discovered that Cicada was using VLC Media Player to deploy a malicious malware loader as part of a long-running cyber attack campaign.
What is VideoLAN, creator of VLC Player, saying?
Now, VideoLAN said that the media player was banned in India back on February 13. The company, though, didn’t state any reason behind the ban yet. In one of its latest tweets counting India Today Tech’s story, VideoLAN was seen asking for help from people in India since the company doesn’t have any idea why VLC Media Player, used widely, has been banned suddenly.
What is the Indian government saying?
Nothing yet. The Indian government hasn’t officially revealed the reason behind banning the media player. However, the blocked website shows — “the website has been blocked as per order of the Ministry of Electronics and Information technology under IT Act, 2000” message. The act deals with the primary law in India dealing with cybercrime and electronic commerce.
Is VLC Media Player no longer working in India?
The VideoLAN President has revealed that the media player is working on some ISPs and not for some. In a recent comment, the company president said, “we got banned since a few months, and we don’t know why. (According to my stats, it is since the 13 February 2022). We’ve asked the Indian government and we got no answer. We probably did not ask the right place though. I wish I knew how to ask properly.” “The weirdest is that some ISP are blocking it and some are not. So why is that the case? Are some ISP not listening to the government? VLC and VideoLAN are quite apolitical (we only fight against DRM and for open source) and VLC is a pure tool that can read anything,” he further added.
