VideoLan, developer of popular media player VLCIndia’s telecom operators have been blocking their websites since February this year in a move that is likely to affect some users in one of the open source company’s biggest markets.
“Most Major ISPs [internet service providers] are banning the site, with various techniques,” VideoLan president and lead developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf said of the block in India, in an email to TechCrunch.
Telecom operators started blocking the VideoLan website on February 13 this year, when the site saw an 80% drop in traffic from the South Asian market, he said.
India represents 10% of all VLC users worldwide, he said. The website’s traffic has dropped 20% overall as a result of the block in India.
Indian telecom operators have not explained why they blocked the VideoLan website, but some speculate that it could be due to a misinterpretation of the security warning from earlier this year.
Security firm Symantec reported in April this year that the Cicada hacker group, with ties to the Chinese government, is exploiting VLC Media Player as well as several other popular applications to remotely access computers. of the victim.
Kempf said he or his company has not been contacted with any Indian government agencies and the blocking could be the result of a misunderstanding about Chinese security.
VLC, downloaded more than 3.5 billion times worldwide, is a local media player that does not require internet access or connection to any particular online service for most features. its. A block on its website does not affect VLC’s existing installation base. Users can also continue to receive updates from mirror sites and app stores.
But by blocking the site, India is pushing its citizens to “shady websites running a hacked version of VLC. So they are endangering their own citizens with this ban,” added Kempf.
New Delhi-based privacy advocacy group Internet Freedom Foundation said in a tweet that blocking VideoLan “was without any publicly disclosed reason.
