VideoLAN media player challenges Indian ban • The Register

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Developers of the open source VideoLAN media player have started sniping at India’s government over an apparent block on the project’s website.

VideoLAN, aka VLC, develops a media player and transcriber famed for playing and transcoding almost any media format, and doing so quickly through a pleasant interface. The project claims its wares have been downloaded over four billion times.

But for the last few months, would-be users located in India have not been able to download from videolan.org, which has been inaccessible for users of some ISPs and in some states.

Governments and ISPs have offered no explanation for the site’s inaccessibility.

One theory relates to the fact that, in April 2022, Symantec suggested a China-linked crime gang named Cicada was conducting a global espionage campaign using tools including attacks on VideoLAN.

India has banned hundreds of Chinese apps, so blocking videloan.org makes some sense in that context.

As VideoLAN is open source, it’s also possible to create fake versions of the software and embed malware. The project has also had security issues involving opening poisoned media files – but largely blamed them on a dependency rather than its own efforts.

Indian blocks of VideoLAN went largely unnoticed for weeks, until last weekend when Indian media reported on the matter. VideoLAN sprang into action on Twitter.

India’s Internet Freedom Foundation then revealed it had been asking questions about the ban, to no avail.

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