Something is happening with the bans there in India as the local ISPs are blocking by government order the VLC site for six months.
VideoLAN is threatening to sue the Indian government, saying it has received no explanation why VLC's website has been blocked by Indian ISPs for the past six months.
But that is not all. It seems that India is making "enviable" efforts to find itself in an angelic internet world. Two days ago an Indian court blocked it only 13.445 sites as pirates!
But VLC's official website, www.videolan.org, which has blocked it since March 2022, has no excuse.
VLC president and lead developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf has written to the Indian Department of Telecom expressing his displeasure and explaining that they have been banned for 6 months without any prior notice.
The letter stated that attempts to access the URL in India lead to the message: “The requested URL has been blocked as per the instructions received from the Ministry of Telecommunications, Government of India”.
Kempf's letter to India's Ministry of Telecom requested a copy of the reasoned blocking order issued to block the URL and an opportunity to defend his positions through a remote hearing.
“If you fail to comply with the above, we shall be entitled and compelled to initiate legal proceedings against you, for failure to protect our rights as guaranteed by the Constitution of India, for breach of your obligations under international law and for breach of your own rules . Any such proceedings, if commenced, shall be at your sole risk, cost and consequences,” the letter said.
VideoLAN is a French non-profit organization that developed the free, open source VLC Media Player.
The Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) said that helped VideoLAN draft the legal notice. The website blocking "was done without prior notice, without giving VideoLAN an opportunity of hearing, which is contrary to the Blocking Rules, 2009 and the law laid down by the Supreme Court in Shreya Singhal v Union of India," the IFF said. .
