VLC Developers Are Suing the Authorities in India, Where the Player Is blocked

VideoLAN developers are going to sue the Indian authorities due to the fact that almost all Internet providers in the country have been blocking the VLC website for six months, but it is completely unclear why this is happening.

The president and lead developer of VLC, Jean-Baptiste Kempf, sent a letter to the Indian Ministry of Telecommunications at the end of September demanding clarification of the reasons for the block.

In March 2022, we were shocked that the URL https://www.videolan.org/ was blocked from viewing in India without prior notice to me or anyone else in our organization. Despite all the messages and hype on social media, neither we nor the Indian public have been given any reason to block this URL.<span class="su-quote-cite">Jean-Baptiste Kempf writes.</span>

Jean-Baptiste Kempf

The email states that all attempts to access the VLC site from India result in the message: “The URL you requested has been blocked as per instructions received from the Ministry of Telecommunications of the Government of India.” Kempf notes that “VideoLAN is a non-political organization (we only have a clear position on anti-DRM and pro-open source issues). So this topic is a little shocking for us.”

The document also states that the Indian government itself approves the use of VLC as part of the Digital India initiative, which supports the use of open source in government. In fact, the Government of India uses the VLC Media Player icon and logo on its website and promotes open-source software in every possible way.

According to the developers, VLC is currently used by about 80 million Indians, and since its release in India, the player has averaged about 25 million downloads per year.

Since nothing is known about the reasons for the blocking, a variety of assumptions have been made.

For example, one theory suggested that the confusion was due to a hacking campaign in which Chinese government hackers exploited VLC Media Player to launch a custom downloader using the VLC Exports feature.

Let me remind you, by the way, that we wrote that Chinese Government Hackers Successfully Spy on Organizations in Europe, Australia and Southeast Asia.

However, Kempf told the media that the blocking of the site began weeks before this campaign was revealed.

The VideoLAN developers conclude their message with a demand to provide them with a “copy of a reasoned blocking order”, and are also looking for ways to protect VLC through a “virtual hearing”. Otherwise, the developers threaten to go to court.

The Internet Freedom Foundation (an Indian non-governmental organization dedicated to protecting rights and freedoms in the field of digital technologies) said that they helped VideoLAN prepare an official notice, and also contacted the authorities themselves, trying to find out the reason for the blocking. The organization assured that they would continue to provide VideoLAN with legal assistance and would fight this “unreasonable and illegal use of censorship.”