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VLC media player banned in India
- 28194608 4y agoMost likely a blanket Blacklist of url containing the keyword video along with unverified source.
- 28194608 4y agohttps://pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetail.aspx?PRID=1637701 https://pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetail.aspx?PRID=1637701 They have listed VLC as an alternative to Chinese apps but then they banned the website. I think its a mistake and someone needs to report this.
- saikatsg 4y agoMaybe they changed their mind :) https://www.techradar.com/news/everyones-favorite-media-player-abused-to-launch-malware-attacks https://www.techradar.com/news/everyones-favorite-media-play...
- 28194608 4y agoA friend of mine got a new laptop so I was installing some important apps and the VLC site wouldn't load. So I checked it on my phone and this came up.
- 28194608 4y agoYeah, I had also faced this problem a few days back. After that I used a VPN to download it.
- 28194608 4y agoSeems to be at ISP level or my local ISP isn't adhering to govt rules. Oh well.
- chasil 4y agoThe last time I downloaded it in Windows 11, a popup suggested that I use the store instead, so I wonder if India also banned that installation path. F-Droid also carries VLC, and I doubt they will ever take direction from the Indian government. On the rare occasion that VLC will not play some file, F-Droid also has the Nova Video Player, but the Nova listing carries a warning that it will track and report your activity.
- unixbane 4y ago
- birksherty 4y agoHow is mpv better than vlc?
- graftak 4y agoMpv is touted for its better video and audio playback quality, it also opens just about any video without artefacts (a grey picture in vlc anyone). Other than that it’s definately more responsive when seeking through a file, and it supports shaders to improve the perceived low res video playback quality. The cherry on the cake really is IINA, a MacOS video player that has a super responsive native UI and is basically what QuickTime should have been.
- gruez 4y ago>video and audio playback quality How is this done? Without additional information the claim sounds like hdmi cable advertising to me. >without artefacts (a grey picture in vlc anyone). What videos are you playing that gets this issue?
- kitsunesoba 4y ago>How is this done? Without additional information the claim sounds like hdmi cable advertising to me. Differences in the video/audio decoding process. VLC optimizes for playing media over a network connection (hence its name Video LAN Client), where temporary dropouts and data loss are common and might cause other players to choke. The cost of this is sometimes less accurate playback. mpv is optimized primarily for accurate playback of media from local storage, and so while it might not fare as well for network/streaming media it's generally measurably better for local media.
- gruez 4y ago
- ortusdux 4y agoI wonder if using a Ninite.com installer bypasses this?
- theknocker 4y ago
- jbk 4y agoIt does
- agentwiggles 4y agoSlightly off topic but man do I love Ninite. Every couple of years when I reinstall Windows I remember it exists and it's magical every time.
- formvoltron 4y agoOpen source might consider banning Linux in India in response.
- buscoquadnary 4y agoThat wouldn't even make sense even remotely like on several levels. Your realize there is no Open Source committee that sits around deciding these things, in fact Open Source at it's heart is designed to ensure the exact opposite of what you suggested. Anyone anywhere can get the code compile and run it.
- tossl568 4y agoI think they were joking
- askafriend 4y agoYou missed the joke. Chill, it's a Friday.
- gruez 4y agoIt's really not that obvious considering a few months ago people were seriously proposing banning russians and/or the russian government from using open source software.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pabs3 4y agoIn case you weren't joking, one of the tenets of open source is no discrimination against groups of people. So it wouldn't really be open source if India were banned from using Linux. https://opensource.org/osd https://opensource.org/osd
- cuteboy19 4y agoSeems like a mistake, otherwise they would have banned the Android version too
- walrus01 4y agoThe Indian government has a long and well documented track record of trying to arbitrarily ban or block things they don't like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nigerian1981 4y agoIncluding journalists
- maxloh 4y agoAren't India a democratic country？
- ska 4y agoDemocratic countries ban things all the time. A more interesting question is if it is principled, and to whose benefit or cost.
- Koshkin 4y agoDemocracy is the dictatorship of the democrats.
- butterNaN 4y agoRepresentative "democracy" with so much hierarchy that you don't have any say over anything after the vote has been cast.
- bjustin 4y agoThis is the way representative democracies work, including the US. Some places have tools such as recall elections that people can use in extreme cases, but usually, it is a matter of voting for someone else next time.
- carstenhag 4y ago
- bongoman37 4y ago
- hprotagonist 4y ago$5 it’s about a version name or something stupid and political.
- balentio 4y agoMaybe try banning windows?
- MerelyMortal 4y agoFinally, year of the Linux desktop!
- Eupraxias 4y agoSay what you will, but I have been using Linux as my desktop machine very happily for over 20 years, and I'm no wizard. VLC is a big part of that!
- MerelyMortal 4y agoSame for me, but about 7 years.
- pessimizer 4y agoFar more child pornography touches Windows than any other piece of software. Someone needs to think of the children.
- culi 4y agoSeems like just an oversight or mistake given nobody's given any details
- darkhorn 4y agoIt reminds me how Turkey banned imbd.com. A musician/movie artist submitted some links to a court that the following links were streaming his movies. In fact IMDB did not stream his movies but because it was up in the search results they have banned imbd.com. And to this day imbd.com is still banned. Back in those days imbd.com had only one page without any content. Yeah, it was typo!
- walrus01 4y agoOr like how Turkey periodically freaks out when some european or north american sources publish something about the Armenian genocide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_genocide
- IronWolve 4y agoMaybe its VLCs built in streaming services like shoutcast directory, maybe a stream on shoutcast is blacklisted in India, so they blacklisted the app. (Icecast actually) https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-stream-radio-stations-in-vlc-player-2438860 https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-stream-radio-stations-in-vlc...
- 8bitsrule 4y agoStreams would be my top guess. I use VLC mostly for a hundred internet-radio streams (today there are over 30,000! relayed by many services!) Imagine the authoritarian nightmares that unfettered access to world-wide radio in dozens of languages might arouse. Unfiltered news! Hedonic music! Other cultures! Wait! we can blame foreign hackers !!
- b215826 4y agoThe Indian government (and Indian courts) is infamous for these random harebrained stunts. In the past, it has banned archive.org [1], continues to block the French ISP free.fr, etc. VLC was likely banned because people use it to watch pirated films (the same reason free.fr continues to be banned [2]). And it's plain f*cking stupid to just ban videolan.org, because it can be downloaded from numerous other websites [3], not to mention the repositories of every major Linux distribution. [1] http://blog.archive.org/2017/08/09/statement-and-questions-regarding-an-indian-courts-order-to-block-archive-org/ http://blog.archive.org/2017/08/09/statement-and-questions-r... [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/74lqug/why_is_free_a_french_telecommunications_company/ https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/74lqug/why_is_free_a... [3] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=download+vlc+-site:videolan.org https://duckduckgo.com/?q=download+vlc+-site:videolan.org
- game-of-throws 4y agoI can't wait until the Indian government tries to ban debian.org https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/vlc https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/vlc
- pabs3 4y agoThey have a Debian derivative called BOSSLinux, so Indians can just use that if Debian gets blocked. https://bosslinux.in/ https://bosslinux.in/
- dartharva 4y agoThat's not a mainstream distro, it's just a standard-issue OS for govt office computers.
- whoibrar 4y agoI'm just waiting for them to ban breathing itself.
- hiyer 4y agoFWIW, Indian website blocks are usually DNS-based, so you can easily get around them by using a different DNS provider from your ISP's or DNS-over-HTTPS.
- spaceman_2020 4y agoWhatever the Indian state doesn’t understand is either banned or taxed to death. Shame that a country with such a young and technically literate population is governed by an army of one-finger-typing tech illiterate boomer bureaucrats.
- known 4y ago
- nottorp 4y agoOn a slight tangent, mplayer is dead right?
- Prolixium 4y agoThey had a release earlier so, no? https://mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html https://mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html I don't think it's under as much active development as it was 10-15 years ago, though.
- nottorp 4y agoWhoa, must try. Thanks.
- MikusR 4y agoIt was superseded by MPV https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv.
- jbk 4y agoPresident of VideoLAN here: we got banned since a few months, and we don’t know why. (According to my stats, it is since the 13 February 2022). We’ve asked the Indian government and we got no answer. We probably did not ask the right place though. I wish I knew how to ask properly. The weirdest is that some ISP are blocking it and some are not. So why is that the case? Are some ISP not listening to the government? VLC and VideoLAN are quite apolitical (we only fight against DRM and for open source) and VLC is a pure tool that can read anything.
- sammy2244 4y ago
- xNeil 4y ago>The weirdest is that some ISP are blocking it and some are not. So why is that the case? Are some ISP not listening to the government? Pretty much. My ISP doesn't block half the stuff the Indian government has banned, while my mobile data provider has - it's genuinely very weird. Regarding contacting the government - maybe https://pgportal.gov.in https://pgportal.gov.in should help? File your grievance with the section of the government you want to complain to - in this case, I'd guess that's the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
- jbk 4y ago> maybe https://pgportal.gov.in https://pgportal.gov.in should help? File your grievance with the section of the government you want to complain to - in this case, I'd guess that's the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. I will do that again then.
- ishanjain28 4y agoA internet freedom activist group had filed a Right-to-Information(RTI) query to know why VLC was banned. The ministry responsible says they have no data on it. https://twitter.com/sflcin/status/1539877804116168704 https://twitter.com/sflcin/status/1539877804116168704
- rubenbe 4y agoThe list of other apps included contains an interesting app: Camscanner The app is apparently Chinese (also mentioned on the wikipedia page [0]) IMHO making an app like this is really smart to try to gain access confidential documents when they are scanned. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CamScanner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CamScanner
- iratewizard 4y agoTrue. A lot of corporate policies are to never handle physical client documents. Scan them and send them to a secure drive.
- butterNaN 4y agoIt is cute to see non-indians trying to guess the reason. We were like you once. It is an exercise in futility. Our government is run by monkeys. They are stubbornly uneducated about science and technology, at the same time pretending to know everything about it. How does our government take decisions? My best guess is they consult a successful team of astrologers.
- UberFly 4y agoFunny and painfully ubiquitous. Probably really well-paid monkey astrologers too.
- hutzlibu 4y agoIf they are succesfull, then they must be good!
- stjohnswarts 4y agogovernments write their own checks and set their own pay rate. You can bet they are quite rich.
- dr_dshiv 4y agoActually, that’d be great. The most likely reason it got banned is because of corruption. One reason for corruption is that politicians aren’t paid well. What smart competent sane person would rationally choose to be a politician? Maybe if it paid competitively. I wonder if there is a study on the ROI?
- UberFly 4y agoThe tree-pruners in the major city near me make 150k a year. I'm guessing that's pocket change to those wacky astrologers. Didn't really mention anything about politicians.
- hellotomyrars 4y agoWhat a wild idea. Corporations and wealthy people are also corrupt. It turns out that it is a lack of morals. Or in many cases a complete dismissal of them for the pursuit of profit.
- elisharobinson 4y agothe real problem which plague's India is over zealous "babu's" aka bureaucrats. It is very difficult to do actual good things with regards to policy so they settle for the most hype thing "ban X" and label it as patriotism and feed the narrative to the media machine which takes and runs with it . Now the government gets to pat itself on the back and the "babu" gains notoriety as a patriot its a very "notice me senpai" thing. They will continue to do this cause they are looked up to by everyone in the country as a educated elite . In reality they are a bunch of cockroaches who collectively share 3 brain cells to make what i like to call "dad joke style policy". If every there is a gaping flaw in modern democracies it is the unaccountable and ever powerful bureaucrat.
- uptownfunk 4y agoJust rehost it / mirror it elsewhere..?
- zmmmmm 4y agoIt's fascinating that attempts at censorship often seem to quickly founder in incompetence of all things. It turns out that actually banning the right things and not the wrong things seems simple on the surface and then turns out to be problem of nearly unsolvable scale and complexity, to the point where the system often falls down through the utter humiliation of how badly it is working.
- pessimizer 4y agoBanning quickly, then unbanning slowly, usually by special request, works just fine for authoritarians. If it matters to enough people, you'll hear about it, and if it matters to important or wealthy people it will create an opportunity for graft/partnership. So, now that VLC (for example) has called you to get you to unban their software, you can call them later to get a feature removed or put in, or just free/discounted consulting on how to block objectionable streams (for example), with a vague threat of rebanning hanging over the discussion. Indonesia just banned the entire foreign internet (without the west caring), and is requiring sites that want to operate within the country to apply for whitelisting. edit: https://thediplomat.com/2022/07/internet-freedom-in-indonesia-is-teetering-on-a-razors-edge/ https://thediplomat.com/2022/07/internet-freedom-in-indonesi... background: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/02/indonesias-proposed-online-intermediary-regulation-may-be-most-repressive-yet https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/02/indonesias-proposed-on...
- YetAnotherNick 4y agoMy guess of what would have happened is this: Some movie producer tried to find places in which their movies were pirated, and did google search and made a list and did a court case. Now some random judge who doesn't understand/like internet asked the sites to be blocked. And videolan.org was middle in that list and it got overlooked. Then they handed that list to ISP. Few ISP found the issue and decided not to block it, but many blocked it without looking.
- jesuscript 4y ago
- eointierney 4y agoIndia banned in VLC media player is impossible, thankfully
- _x5tx 4y agoI’m currently in a trip in the south of Brazil, and I can’t open the 2600.com website since I’ve been here. I’m not sure if it is some kind of government filter or just 2600’s firewall blocking Brazilian ips.
- vivegi 4y agoFrom India. I think this is probably inconsistent across ISPs. I was able to access VideoLAN website and the download link just now. https://www.meity.gov.in/ https://www.meity.gov.in/ : This is the website for the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, the government body that issues orders under the relevant IT Act in India. They have a grievance section to file a grievance. Past order banning 118 apps from 2020 (doesn't seem to list VLC) from Press Information Bureau (the communications division of the Govt. of India) https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1650669 https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1650669
- ankurdhama 4y agoInteresting. Tried to access https://www.videolan.org/ https://www.videolan.org/ .. didnt work... after hitting refresh continously for 10-15 times, the site loaded fine :)
- SergeAx 4y agoI really wish there was an independent lightweight mesh network for data, unblockable by design. Of course we still will need a broadband for heavy lifting, but the idea of governments deciding what we can access and what not on a technical level (domains, IP ranges) seems ridiculous for me, connected since 1990s.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]