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Comment by jbk | Hacker News Reader

President 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.

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>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.

> 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.

I will do that again then.

A 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

> My ISP doesn't block half the stuff the Indian government has banned, while my mobile data provider has - it's genuinely very weird

That's quite normal. Your ISP is probably much smaller than a telco and so drives much less scrutiny from law enforcement.

Please watch my FOSDEM talk from 2020, it explains the similar effect in Russia: https://archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/sdnpof/

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.

The video wasn't loading for me there, here is the YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6SwxXhZGv4

It wasn't loaded because the CDN that hosts it redirects from HTTPS to plain HTTP.

I hold a Class B ISP license. We get letters (not emails, physical letters)from Department of Telecommunication asking us to block http://www.example.com

We don't bother with blocking http://example.com or its https cousin.

In this case we have not received any letter for VLC

Do they not also ever request blocks on particular IP addresses? A lot of collateral damage happened due to blocking whole ranges from AWS and such when Russia was trying to ban Telegram.

We haven't received request for blocking blocks of IPs till date. Maybe it happens with upstream ISPs or peering exchanges, I'm unsure.

In the past, we have received requests for single IP addresses

Thank you... It's a good reminder that censorship always has collateral damage.

I was at FOSDEM that year but unfortunately missed your talk. Just watched the video of it and it was very well explained, taught me a thing or two about CDN's and SPOF's, thanks for that.

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).

This is unfortunate, sorry you had to go through that.

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?

Maybe they corrected it, but for me it says the opposite.

> Notably, VLC Media Player is not backed by a Chinese company. It is developed by VideoLAN, a Paris-based firm.

The article basically states that the reason the government banned it was because Chinese actors were using VideoLAN products (VLC) to deploy malware loaders onto citizens' devices.

I don't understand why they banned videolan.org though. It's a French website, and I'd assume the Chinese actors were bundling malware when VLC was installed from another website and not videolan.org.

Videolan.org is EXACTLY where VLC should be downloaded from to ensure the software you download is malware free - ironically, I'd expect banning the VLC website to increase VLC downloads from alternative sources, and thus increasing the possibility of the user downloading malware.

It says

> The reason behind blocking these apps is that the government feared these platforms were sending user data to China

Maybe they have some CDN or some service in China?

None whatsoever.

> It is developed by VideoLAN, a Paris-based firm.

Non-profit, not firm.

you work and ethics have been an inspiration to many

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=jbk "JBK VLC" (search) ... French.

> That surprised me because I thought VideoLAN was and is French.

It is a French non-profit whose address is my parents place :)

Thanks for all of your hard work and for not selling out. I love you folks.

Reading this made my day. Thank you, from my heart, for this software - it is precious to me.

I have relied on it since 2002 as my everyday media player on every device I have ever built. I have evangelized whenever and wherever I can.

I know it's kind of funny to ask this, but have your parents received any weird legal mail from the Indian government that might be about the block?

lol. I actually checked with them :)

A fun conversation to imagine. "How's your health? The family? Have you gotten any mail about my project being a Chinese cyber weapon? No? Well, that's confusing."

Clearly VideoLAN isn’t trying hard enough!

/s, in jest, in case that isn’t clear haha

This is just awesome to hear. I have been using VLC since I was a kid. Love your work.

Thanks for all your efforts. VLC rocks. Period.

I greatly appreciate the resource you've built for everyone. Thank you!

When the project got this large, I'd say it's safer to use an actual business address before too late than a private one as any weird people may target your parents' house for no good reason.

Wayyy tooo late for that.

Not sure if your parents even feel comfortable?

It's never too late than never?

No one cares :)

> 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.

Incorrect, Cicada deployed a custom version of VLC which was hacked.

Use VLC from our website and you’ll be safe.

But maybe the indian government did not care to differentiate?

Or lack the competence to take a good decision.

Unrelated, do you have a stance on Ninite as a distribution method?

No, should we?

> The weirdest is that some ISP are blocking it and some are not. So why is that the case?

Because India. Laws are merely guidelines here.

It must be because VLC allows people to watch pirated content. Which would be the most ridiculous reason to get banned for.

Sssshh! Please keep that opinion to yourself... we dont want thr Australian Government to get any ideas!

Well if that is the case they would ban torrent clients and other video players

Ban the internet in general IMO

Why stop there, ban electricity!

so does windows media player lol

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.

[1] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/chinese-hacke...

Do you use Cloudflare? If yes, this could be the cause, but I'm not sure. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12091900

No, we don’t.

>VLC and VideoLAN are quite apolitical

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.

Because The Great Dictator said so.

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