After imposing a ban on VLC Player months ago in India, the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) has now lifted the ban. This comes after the VideoLan, a non-profit organization that operates VLC Player issued a legal notice in October demanding the reason behind the ban.
VLC Player Can Now Be Downloaded in India
This information comes from a tweet by the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), which lent legal support to VideoLan when the ban came into effect. The unban means that you will now be able to download the VLC Player in India. The VideoLan website can now be accessed.
It is said that VideoLan received an email for MeitY, which revealed that the ban has been lifted. Although, the email didn’t include any reason for the decision made.
To recall, VLC Player was banned in February this year, that too, without any prior notice. Post the ban, many telecom operators began banning the VLC Player without providing any proper reason.
As a result, VideoLan and IFF, in October, send a notice to MeitY demanding answers to the sudden ban. In a response, MeitY gave a response and suggested that the VLC Player displayed “suspicious behavior.” It was accused of being used by a China-backed hacking group called Cicada to get access to users’ personal information and hinder their privacy. This information came from a report by Security firm Symantec in April this year. VideoLan denied such claims.
The company’s president and lead developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf claimed that this ban is a result of a misunderstanding. Kempf emphasized the fact that the VLC Player is being used by about 80 million people, who would want to get the updates via unsafe third parties, making them more susceptible to cyber-attacks.
For those who don’t know, hundreds of popular apps like TikTok, WeChat, PUBG, and even BGMI among others have been banned in India over the course of 2 years due to the same reasons. So, are you happy about the VLC Player unban in India? Let us know what you think about the new update in the comments below.
