VLC India ban: VideoLAN issues legal notice to government bodies, calls out ‘irony’

VideoLAN, the organisation that developed the popular VLC Media Player, has issued a legal notice to the Indian bodies over ‘ban’ on its official website. The company has sent a notice to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. As per the notice, VLC Media Player’s website was blocked in the country back in March without any prior notice. The company also claims that no reason was provided by the authorities for blocking the website.

According to some reports, VLC Media Player has been outlawed in the nation because Cicada, a hacker group backed by China, utilised the platform to conduct cyberattacks. Security specialists recently learned that Cicada, as part of a protracted cyberattack campaign, was utilising VLC Media Player to distribute a malicious malware loader. 

In the legal notice, VideoLAN has also detailed the ‘irony’ as it said that “This is particularly shocking to us, since the Government of India itself endorses the use of VLC as a part of its Digital India initiative, where it has expressed its intention to use open-source softwares for government applications. In fact, the Government of India also appears to use VLC Media Player's icon and logo on its website promoting open source softwares.”

VLC is currently being used by 80 million Indians and has consistently seen an average of 25 million downloads in the country since its release.