VLC Player has been unbanned in India
Nine-month saga could still end in tears
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India’s Ministry of Electronics and IT has removed a ban against the official website of popular media player applicationVLC Media Playerthat was instigated in February 2022.
As reported byTechCrunch,the announcement of the ban being lifted came not from the ministry, but from New-Delhi based advocacy group Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), which provided the developers of VLC, VideoLan, with “legal support”.
The lifting of the ban may mark an end to the saga, although VideoLAN will no doubt continue searching for answers around a debacle that the company claims may have broken Indian law.
VideoLAN’s VLC ban response
It’s unclear whether VideoLANfilinga legal notice via the IFF last month, demanding a response from the Indian government, had any bearing on proceedings.
In it, VideoLAN claimed that, according to India’s 2009 IT Blocking Rules, the government was legally required to provide a reason for the ban. Although the ban is no longer in place, it most likely still is.
Check out our list of the best free VPNs right now>The cone is gone: VLC Media Player silently banned in India>India’s restrictive VPN law should be a warning to us all
As part of the notice, VideoLAN requested a fair hearing to dispute the ban, and although that’s no longer necessary, the company may still feel aggrieved and decide to initiate legal proceedings.
Another bizarre implication of the ban is that it seems to go against the Indian government’s pledge to useopen-source softwareas part of the ongoing Digital India initiative.
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The ban itself was superficial, and easily circumvented by aVPN, as it only applied to the website where VLC is available,videolan.org.
However, VideoLAN president and lead VLC developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf has previously toldTechCrunchthat the ban, introduced by several internet service providers (ISPs), was damaging to VLC’s reputation, as well as to new users, because they may have been pushed to websites that host potentially compromised versions of VLC.
Luke Hughes holds the role of Staff Writer at TechRadar Pro, producing news, features and deals content across topics ranging from computing to cloud services, cybersecurity, data privacy and business software.
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