VLC Media Player BAN in India lifted: All you need to know

VLC Media Player: Good news! The Indian government has lifted its ban on the popular media player VLC Media Player in India after blocking it for almost nine months  The news was announced by New Delhi-based advocacy group, Internet Freedom Foundation, and then confirmed by VideoLAN, which is the developer for the VLC Media Player. 

According to a report from BGR India, the Internet Freedom Foundation provided legal support to VideoLAN in its quest to get the ban lifted in India. VLC Media Player was blocked February this year. However, the news regarding the app being banned in the country came into light months after that in August this year. 

IFF on Twitter wrote: "VICTORY! @GoI_MeitY has decided to remove its ban on the website of VLC media player. IFF provided legal support to @videolan throughout this process. #WhatTheBlock.

"This ban was put into place without any prior notice and without giving VideoLAN the opportunity of a hearing, which went against the 2009 Blocking Rules and the law laid down by the Supreme Court in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India. This was strange because VLC Media Player is an open-source software which is used by nearly 80 million Indians," IFF was quoted as saying.

India is one of VLC's biggest markets, and the majority of users download the software from the official website. "Most major ISPs (internet service providers) are banning the site, with diverse techniques," VideoLAN president and lead developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf said of the blocking in India.

In light of the blocking, the site immediately observed a drop of 80 per cent in traffic from the South Asian market, reports TechCrunch. With over 3.5 billion downloads worldwide, VLC is a media player that requires no internet access or connectivity to any particular service to operate.