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VLC-developer VideoLAN sends legal notice to Indian ministries over ban
- puyoxyz 4y agoMore discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33077253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33077253
- jwilk 4y agoArchived copy without GDPR nag screen: https://web.archive.org/web/20221004072224/https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/04/vlc-developer-videolan-sends-legal-notice-to-indian-ministries-over-ban/ https://web.archive.org/web/20221004072224/https://techcrunc...
- jwilk 4y agoRelated: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32441911 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32441911 ("VLC media player banned in India", August 2022, 168 comments)
- stevewatson301 4y agoIf the Indian government doesn’t respond, what measures does VideoLAN, being based out of France, reasonably have? They can’t really sue the Indian authorities.
- ovi256 4y agoThey can sue, they'd have to hire a local lawyer of course. If the Indian gov can take action affecting you, being able to petition for redress is essential for rule of law.
- unmole 4y ago> They can’t really sue the Indian authorities. They can. It's likely the Internet Freedom Foundation will assist them in doing that.
- jbk 4y agoThat’s indeed my plan…
- red_trumpet 4y agoAccording to the article, they work together with the Internet Freedom Foundation[1], which is a NGO based in India. [1] https://internetfreedom.in/ https://internetfreedom.in/
- minraws 4y ago> They can’t really sue the Indian authorities. I can't say we are doing the best things but at least you can still bring the govt to court here in India. Judicial system here is slow, but it at least still works...
- baybal2 4y ago> Judicial system here is slow, but it at least still works... Defaults in India are very fast.
- baybal2 4y agoThey can throw the show cause notice, and get a default in 1 month if nobody responds.
- qart 4y agoI wonder if someone in the government has something against France. http://free.fr/ http://free.fr/ has been blocked in India since years! There are quite a few open source related websites hosted there, all inaccessible to me over clearnet.
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- daniel202020 4y ago
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- e3bc54b2 4y agoNice! About time unilateral arbitrary bans on good tech by stupid beurocrats and naive courts gets challenged.
- raxxorraxor 4y agoI mean the Chinese security issue might save the excuse because they can claim technological incompetence, but otherwise I would expect that any ban of VLC has come down to direct corruption.
- jbk 4y agoThe Chinese security issue explanation does not match the dates of the ban.
- red_trumpet 4y agoHere is the blog post by the Internet Freedom Foundation: https://internetfreedom.in/videolan-issued-legal-notice-to-dot-and-meity-for-banning-their-website-in-india/ https://internetfreedom.in/videolan-issued-legal-notice-to-d...
- b112 4y agoThe real issue, and it is one affecting all governments world wide, is pay, working conditions, and culture. Whether the US, Canada, or I presume India, pay for tech expertise does not even remotely match the private sector. If you want highly skilled devs, and management, people who understand and are experts at tech, you are not going to get them at 1/4 of what is possible in the private sector. And even if somehow you pulled in nationalistic, 'serve your society' tendencies, the next part appears. Work culture. Government work needs to be highly regulated, very controlled, stodgy by nature, because it is for the public good. It needs checks and bounds far beyond a private corp, or at least different than a private corp, this is the nature of the beast. Private corp has mechanisms to ensure success, the primary being sink or swim profit motive. Government requires monitoring and mission success determination in a different way. A stodgy, stifling way. The two times I took government contracts, it was an inordinately stifling, red taped, inability to think creatively culture, a stifling type of work. So you have ridiculously low pay, coupled with stifling, non-creative work culture. Yeah. So no wonder no one knows how hacks work, or what VLC is, or how to enforce bans / etc The competence is, sadly, just not there. And this affects all of us.
- themitigating 4y ago"Government work needs to be highly regulated, very controlled, stodgy by nature, because it is for the public good. It needs checks and bounds far beyond a private corp, or at least different than a private corp, this is the nature of the beast." Few want to pay for this
- b112 4y agoThere is nothing to "pay for". Government work is like this, already, everywhere. It has been for thousands of years. Canada, US, India. It has another name, bureaucracy. It is to the public good, that there are checks and bounds on power, forms to fill out, procedures to be followed. Yet this is counter to creativity, to moving fast, to embracing the new. But if governments at least paid market rates for tech labour, not 1/4 of it, they would at least overcome one hurdle.
- Shorel 4y agoWhile I agree with VLC and I wish they succeed, their notice says: “Any such proceedings, if initiated, shall be solely at your risk, cost, and for breach of your own rules,” And it is funny they include "cost", as if every country in the planet had this bizarre custom of making the loser in a legal proceeding to pay for the lawyers of both parts.
- vivegi 4y agoThis seems to be a shadowban by possibly overzealous/incompetent ISPs. I am in India and able to access and download VLC through my ISP from the official videolan website. It is very likely the case would get thrown out as the party to which the notice is served (Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology) might just submit an affidavit / explanation to the court that no ban has been issued. That would leave videolan with the option of pursuing the ISPs and then it becomes murky. They should probably also add the ISPs (at least the big ones) that are blocking the website as additional defendants so they can issue sworn affidavits on whether there is a shadowban in place. I absolutely don't get why videolan needs to be blocked. I hope they get the blockage lifted.
- dane-pgp 4y ago> This seems to be a shadowban by possibly overzealous/incompetent ISPs. I suspect we won't get many people joining this discussion to say that private companies are allowed to do whatever they want, and it's not censorship because they're not the government, and if you don't like your ISP shadowbanning websites then you can just change ISP.
- vivegi 4y agoIt is a little more complicated than that. A large percentage of people in India access the Internet from their mobile phones and are likely to be using the data plan of their mobile carrier. So, they do not have that luxury.
- dane-pgp 4y agoThen they should just start their own mobile carrier. /s
- the_og_umar 4y agoAs easy as 1-2-3, right?
- tinus_hn 4y ago
- consumer451 4y agoI can't find it now, but there was a VLC CVE report about being able to execute code remotely, with a CCP threat actor using it. VLC said it was due to a fake version of VLC being distributed. Could this all be related to that?
- boomboomsubban 4y agohttps://www.ghacks.net/2022/04/11/symantec-says-that-hackers-distributed-a-modified-version-of-vlc-and-exploited-it-for-malware-attacks/ https://www.ghacks.net/2022/04/11/symantec-says-that-hackers... Maybe related? To my knowledge, India hasn't said anything about why it's banned. And everybody agrees the issue was a modified version of VLC being distributed, the original report put it in a confusing way that made it sound like base VLC was susceptible.
- consumer451 4y agoYes, exactly. My guess was that it was an overreaction/mistake and now admitting that would embarrass people. Especially since banning the real VLC would increase the risk to Indian users by increasing the adoption of the fake VLC.
- jbk 4y agoThis does not match the dates of the ban.
- boomboomsubban 4y agoIt might fit the dates, according to you the site was blocked in February and the malware campaign started late last year. It'd require independent verification from the Indian government, but it'd be possible. I do find it hard to believe India was on top of things enough to catch the malicious version early but stupidly thought the best solution was to block the official version. But it was possible.
- everyone 4y agoVLC is fantastic but I haven't used it in a long time. I switched to MPC-HC. I found that the built-in codecs VLC used were not the best.
- orangepurple 4y agoMPC-HC is not under development since 2017. Please switch to something else.
- everyone 4y agoOh I never even noticed that. It's been working perfectly since then though. It seems MPC-BE is a similar project that is still under development.
- weberer 4y agoThat's been depreciated for several years. Most people these days go with either VLC or MPV. https://mpv.io/ https://mpv.io/
- everyone 4y agoTx for suggestion but neither of those are reasonable alternatives imo. VLC doesnt use your system codecs, it uses its own built in ones, and MPV "provides no real GUI" according to their website. It seems that MPC-BE is a similar thing to MPC-HC which is still in development.
- MayeulC 4y agoTry mpv before dismissing it like that! They don't provide traditionnal ui controls, but there are still a few buttons, play, pause, next/previous, a seek bar, subtitles/audio track, etc. Everything is pretty barebones as it's running on the subtitle engine AFAIK. You generally drag and drop media to play it, or open files directly (or with the command line). These days I mostly use mpv, it ha great HW accel, wayland support, etc. I still use vlc for more involved cases like playing media off the network (its original use- case!), disk or webcams, etc. Though mpv can handle most of these too!
- jbk 4y agoPresident of VideoLAN here: it is what I did this weekend with the help of the IFF. We’ll see what happens next… AMA
- SturgeonsLaw 4y agoNo question from me, just a thank you for fighting the good fight and making quality software
- rPlayer6554 4y agoThanks for all your hard work. VLC is such a high-quality piece of software. I hope this is all resolved.
- helsontaveras18 4y agoWhat’s your strategy? Do you know if this strategy has seen success in India? What are the checks and balances that the Indian government has to resolve these matters?
- jbk 4y ago> What’s your strategy? Do you know if this strategy has seen success in India? Ask questions to try and get answers and then build a case if needed. And use lawyers if needed.
- GekkePrutser 4y agoDo you have money for lawyers being a FOSS project and all?
- jbk 4y agoEnough to start, yes.
- vivegi 4y agoHave you tried writing to the large ISPs in India that seem to be blocking your website? You may want to do that while the current case is in progress. At the least, it would give you additional information to plan next moves. Perhaps, IFF can help determining the top ISPs that are blocking. I wish you good luck in your case.
- instagraham 4y agoIncredibly stupid ban. Because there are fake VLC .exe files that are infected with malware that have been circulating, the govt blocks access to the official site. Tells you volumes about what they understand of tech, and should give you enough salt to view all their "digital" claims and plans with.
- the_og_umar 4y agoThe Indian government has been banning sites more frequently for the last 2 years for some reason It was mainly porn sites in the beginning but it's seems to be getting out of hand now
- selfhoster69 4y agoYeah no doubt it's gonna be China in a few years time if the current government remains in power.
- addingadimensio 4y ago