VLC Player has been unbanned in India
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India’s Ministry of Electronics and IT has lifted a ban on the official website of the popular media player application VLC Media Player, which was instituted in February 2022.
As reported by TechCrunch (opens in new tab), the announcement of the lifting of the ban did not come from the ministry, but from the New Delhi-based advocacy group Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), which provided “legal support” to VLC’s developers, VideoLan.
The lifting of the ban could mean an end to the saga, though VideoLAN will no doubt continue to look for answers around a debacle the company claims broke Indian law.
VideoLAN’s VLC ban response
It is unclear whether VideoLAN Submit a legal notice last month through the IFF, demanding a response from the Indian government, had some influence on the proceedings.
In it, VideoLAN claimed that, under India’s 2009 IT blocking rules, the government was required by law to provide a reason for the ban. Although the ban is no longer in effect, it most likely still is.
As part of the notice, VideoLAN has requested a fair hearing to contest the ban, and while that is no longer required, the company may still take offense and decide to take legal action.
Another bizarre implication of the ban is that it appears to run counter to the Indian government’s pledge to use open source software as part of its ongoing Digital India initiative.
The ban itself was superficial and easily circumvented by one VPNsince it only applied to the website where VLC is available, videolan.org (opens in new tab).
However, Jean-Baptiste Kempf, president of VideoLAN and lead developer of VLC, has told this before TechCrunch (opens in new tab) that the ban, introduced by several Internet Service Providers (ISPs), harmed VLC’s reputation, as well as new users, as they may have been pushed to websites that may be hosting compromised versions of VLC.