VLC Media Player banned in India: Here is how the company reacted | Digit

Back in March of this year, the Indian government banned the very popular VLC Media Player without specifying any reason. The ban that has been imposed isn’t a proper ban, but rather a soft ban, meaning that while the VLC player itself works fine for Indian users without any issues, the main website of VLC has been banned in India. 

Currently, if any Indian internet users try to access the VideoLAN website, they get the following message: “Your requested URL has been blocked as per the directions received from the Department of Telecommunications Government of India.”

VideoLAN, VLC’s parent company says that they weren’t even given an opportunity to say anything against the ban. Now, they have also sent a legal notice to the Indian Government. Furthermore, they are also asking the government to provide them with a reason for the block so that they can have an opportunity to defend themselves.

Why was VLC Media Player banned in India?

As of now, the Government of India has not yet released any official statement regarding the ban of VLC Media Player in India. VideoLan claims that the platform was banned 6 months ago in the month of February 2022. They claim to have even approached the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to know the reasons behind the ban, however, they did not receive any response. 

This is very surprising as earlier, whenever such decisions were taken, an official statement was released from the government. Something that is even more surprising is that the VLC Media Player app is still available on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. It has to be noted that the any other apps that have been banned by the government in India were removed from both these stores almost instantly.

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