People in India are suffering from downloading the iconic VLC Media Player, without any official explanation as to why it has been released so far.
VideoLAN, the Paris-based company, the open-source video player, has shown that its official online page has been blocked in India since February 13.
The news came as the site experienced an 80% drop in traffic in the South Asian market, the company’s president and lead developer, Jean-Baptiste Kempf, told TechCrunch (opens in new tab).
“The strangest thing [thing] is that some ISPs block it and some don’t. So why aren’t some ISPs paying attention to the government?” wrote Kempf on the Hacker News forum (opens in a new tab).
Users who have already downloaded the media player can continue to use it without any problems, as you don’t need to be connected to any of their servers to work. And, while you can still download VLC from the Apple Store, Google Play, and mirrored sites, other people might want an Indian VPN so they can do so on their official website.
VideoLAN is now applying on social media, hoping to get answers to the question.
If you are in India, please contact us. August https://t. co/rOpIjlx0q912, 2022
As discussed above, the Indian government has not given an official explanation as to why its decision.
The virtual rights organization Internet Freedom Foundation showed in a tweet (opens in a new tab) that India’s Ministry of Electronics and Informatics responded to its investigation on July 14 that “no data is available. “
At the same time, some reports speculate that the ban may be due to the hacker organization Cicada, allegedly subsidized by the Chinese government, a fake edition of VLC Media Player, among other applications, to launch malware attacks.
“VideoLAN is quite apolitical (we fight DRM and for open source) and VLC is a natural tool that can read anything,” Kempf said.
He also added that if this were the genuine motivation for the ban, it would be more harmful than smart, as it would push users to download his service through less secure sites.
Experts. . . Blocking the online homepage will only push users to stranger online pages and suspicious versions of VLC. These experts are incompetent. . . August https://t. co/QNVQwh8HF216, 2022
VideoLAN said that 10% of all VLC users in the world are in India.
More and more users are calling India’s Ministry of Electronics and Informatics on social media to lift the ban.
Chiara is a multimedia journalist, with an eye on the latest trends and issues in cybersecurity. He is a member of Future and focuses on VPN. He primarily writes news and reports on knowledge privacy, online censorship, and virtual rights for TechRadar, Tom’s Guide, and T3. Passionate about virtual storytelling in all its forms, she also enjoys photography, video creation, and podcasts. Originally from Milan, Italy, it was now founded in Bristol, UK, since 2018.
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