More than nine months after blocking the official website of the popular media player in the South Asian market, India has lifted the download ban. VideoLAN sought an explanation from the nation's IT and Telecom ministries for the block order.
The New Delhi-based Internet Freedom Foundation, which provided legal support to VideoLAN, said on Monday that the ministry of electronics and IT has removed its ban on the website. The order was confirmed by Videolan.
The ban was put into place without any prior notice and without giving VideoLAN the chance of a hearing, which is against the law laid down by the Supreme Court. The open-source software used by nearly 80 million Indians was the reason why this was odd.
VideoLAN president and lead developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf said in an earlier interview that Indian telecom operators blocked the company's official website in February of this year. India is a large market for VLC.
Most people download the application from the official website.
Kempf said that most major internet service providers are blocking the site. The site immediately noticed a decrease in traffic from the South Asian market.
VideoLAN and the Internet Freedom Foundation used legal methods to get answers about the ban. The order of the ban was never made public by India's IT ministry. VideoLAN wanted a copy of the blocking order.
Some speculated that the VideoLan website was blocked because of a security warning from earlier this year.
A hacker group with ties to the Chinese government has been exploiting popular applications to gain remote access to the victim's computers, according to a report by a security firm. Kempf denied being contacted by any government agency.
A local media player that doesn't require internet access or connection to any particular service online for the majority of its features is called VLC. There was a block on its website, but it didn't affect the install base.
The citizens of India were being pushed to shady websites that are running hacked version of the software. Kempf warned that the ban would endanger their own citizens.