>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 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.
The most likely explanation is: the government does not want to block your website, it is collateral damage. They want to block something else, but there is no technical possibility to block that without also blocking your website. This also explains variation between ISPs: there is no centralized solution for blocking. Some of them are using IP-based blocking because they have no technology that would look deeper, some of them block on the DNS level, and some on the TLS SNI level.
Indian here - you will have to go to the indian court to get your site unblocked. (Talking to our government will be like talking to a brick wall). As other's have pointed out, I too believe your site is just collateral damage in the fight against piracy. Now that the indian film industry is feeling the pinch of piracy because of the growth of high speed internet in India, and streaming platforms too are being aggressive against pirate sites (who they see as competitors), many torrent websites and pirate streaming platforms are now banned in India. The usual process for this is that the right holder can go to court and provide a list of URL's and ask for it to be blocked. The court then orders it to be blocked after conducting their enquiry (which often doesn't have any representation from the other party as most of these sites are foreign and many obviously will choose not to defend themselves in court unless they are not doing anything illegal).
I speculate that in your case one of these people saw a link or reference to VLC in one of these pirate sites (many pirate sites do openly recommend VLC if someone complains they are unable to play their video file), and figured they'd include your site too (either out of ignorance, or deliberate malice to create hurdles for non-techies to watch the videos).
> 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?
Please, please, please don't include these sentences in any email you send to Indian govt. My ISP usually doesn't listen to the blocking instructions and most sites are unblocked, if you ask these questions directly to the government maybe they will go all in and enforce this rule. This blocklist is quite lax and not enforced with much severity, but if my government figures it out that there are many local ISPs who don't use the blocklist, the government they might start enforcing it more severity.
> 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?
From experience being blocked from time to time in many countries...
Most countries that block things ocassionally just aren't very good at blocking things. They might not consistently communicate with all ISPs; it's pretty common that all mobile ISPs will do blocking but no wireline ISPs do it. Sometimes only the major ISPs get asked. Sometimes they get asked and don't block for whatever reason. Sometimes ISPs take a long time to update block lists. Sometimes they'll block things from DNS, but only for people using their DNS servers.
Best in class at blocking is probably the great firewall, but they sometimes do inconsistent blocking on purpose.
As a sibling said, it's best not to bring up the inconsistencies if you find the right people to ask. If you haven't already contacted the TRAI (telecom regulatory authority of india), that's where I'd start, but I dunno.
VLC is one of the most commmon softwares in India, it's a "peoples' software". The ban won't last long, just try to contact I.T. ministry and explain your solution.
Some reports suggest that VLC Media Player has been blocked in the country because the platform was China-backed hacking group Cicada was using it for cyber attacks. Just a few months ago, security experts discovered that Cicada was using VLC Media Player to deploy a malicious malware loader as part of a long-running cyber attack campaign.
Although I'm not sure, this [1] could be the reason. TLDR: A chinese hacker group took the official exe, added a malicious dll in it and distributed it to NGOs and government institutions, most likely through a clone website or phishing email. Purpose was said to be espionage.
[EDIT]
Ofcourse the Indian media reported that the official VideoLAN org was controlled by the said hacker group which leveraged it's position to distribute malware.
While both VLC and VideoLAN were started and mostly based in Europe ( France ) . It still takes a lot of courage in today's tech world to say you are apolitical. Which is partly forbidden because apolitical stance in itself is political, or so I have been told.
The 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.
It 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.
+1. Around 2005/6 there was some news story that some minister was asking why long distance phone call taxes were dropping and someone explained that corporates were using Skype now. His response was that they are still required to pay the taxes. facepalm
Recently, in an op/ed article about something different the journalist said "India is a first world country with a third world government."
More on topic: I didn't know about VLC until an Indian coworker introduced it to me.
It 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!
the 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.
It'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.
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.
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/ : 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.
Maybe 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)
Streams 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!
Whatever 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.
I 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.
I’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.
[+] [-] jbk|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] xNeil|3 years ago|reply
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 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.
[+] [-] patrakov|3 years ago|reply
The most likely explanation is: the government does not want to block your website, it is collateral damage. They want to block something else, but there is no technical possibility to block that without also blocking your website. This also explains variation between ISPs: there is no centralized solution for blocking. Some of them are using IP-based blocking because they have no technology that would look deeper, some of them block on the DNS level, and some on the TLS SNI level.
[+] [-] webmobdev|3 years ago|reply
I speculate that in your case one of these people saw a link or reference to VLC in one of these pirate sites (many pirate sites do openly recommend VLC if someone complains they are unable to play their video file), and figured they'd include your site too (either out of ignorance, or deliberate malice to create hurdles for non-techies to watch the videos).
[+] [-] nindalf|3 years ago|reply
The article made a claim that VLC is owned by a Chinese entity. That surprised me because I thought VideoLAN was and is French. Is that the case?
[+] [-] shmde|3 years ago|reply
Please, please, please don't include these sentences in any email you send to Indian govt. My ISP usually doesn't listen to the blocking instructions and most sites are unblocked, if you ask these questions directly to the government maybe they will go all in and enforce this rule. This blocklist is quite lax and not enforced with much severity, but if my government figures it out that there are many local ISPs who don't use the blocklist, the government they might start enforcing it more severity.
[+] [-] toast0|3 years ago|reply
From experience being blocked from time to time in many countries...
Most countries that block things ocassionally just aren't very good at blocking things. They might not consistently communicate with all ISPs; it's pretty common that all mobile ISPs will do blocking but no wireline ISPs do it. Sometimes only the major ISPs get asked. Sometimes they get asked and don't block for whatever reason. Sometimes ISPs take a long time to update block lists. Sometimes they'll block things from DNS, but only for people using their DNS servers.
Best in class at blocking is probably the great firewall, but they sometimes do inconsistent blocking on purpose.
As a sibling said, it's best not to bring up the inconsistencies if you find the right people to ask. If you haven't already contacted the TRAI (telecom regulatory authority of india), that's where I'd start, but I dunno.
[+] [-] bhushanvp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] watdeduck|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dominotw|3 years ago|reply
Because India. Laws are merely guidelines here.
[+] [-] kubatyszko|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pythonb3sss|3 years ago|reply
[EDIT]
Ofcourse the Indian media reported that the official VideoLAN org was controlled by the said hacker group which leveraged it's position to distribute malware.
[1] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/chinese-hacke...
[+] [-] hkc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksec|3 years ago|reply
While both VLC and VideoLAN were started and mostly based in Europe ( France ) . It still takes a lot of courage in today's tech world to say you are apolitical. Which is partly forbidden because apolitical stance in itself is political, or so I have been told.
[+] [-] heynowheynow|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sammy2244|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] captain-coding|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] b215826|3 years ago|reply
[1] http://blog.archive.org/2017/08/09/statement-and-questions-r...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/74lqug/why_is_free_a...
[3] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=download+vlc+-site:videolan.org
[+] [-] butterNaN|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] walrus01|3 years ago|reply
When you learn first hand how grossly ignorant of the internet many politicians really are, in almost any country, it can be quite the wake up call.
[+] [-] UberFly|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Soids|3 years ago|reply
Recently, in an op/ed article about something different the journalist said "India is a first world country with a third world government."
More on topic: I didn't know about VLC until an Indian coworker introduced it to me.
[+] [-] YY-EN40P|3 years ago|reply
I feel great sympathy for you. From JPN.
[+] [-] nyczomg|3 years ago|reply
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes
[+] [-] ayush--s|3 years ago|reply
except the fine print is decided by bureaucrats, and not politicians themselves. your bias against the current government is blinding your logic.
[+] [-] ThePowerOfFuet|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walrus01|3 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India
[+] [-] darkhorn|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walrus01|3 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_genocide
[+] [-] rubenbe|3 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] iratewizard|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elisharobinson|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zmmmmm|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] YetAnotherNick|3 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] vivegi|3 years ago|reply
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/ : 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
[+] [-] ortusdux|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agentwiggles|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theknocker|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] IronWolve|3 years ago|reply
https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-stream-radio-stations-in-vlc...
[+] [-] 8bitsrule|3 years ago|reply
Wait! we can blame foreign hackers !!
[+] [-] spaceman_2020|3 years ago|reply
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|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] cuteboy19|3 years ago|reply
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