image Credit - Brand EPS
One of India's most popular media players across multiple platforms, the VLC media player is reportedly being banned in the country. VLC Media Player website no longer works in India and users can no longer download the exe file (Windows executable file) of the program for installation.
A tweet by Gagandeep Sapra shows when users try to open VLC media player websites in India, So let them IT Act, The website has been blocked as per the order of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology dated 2000.
Interestingly, the VLC Media Player (Android app) is still available on the Google Play Store. Android users can go to Google Play Store and install the app for now. There is still no word on whether the mobile version of the popular show will also be affected by the ban.
According to an earlier report by MediaNama, VLC Media Player was banned in India in the last five months. However, most users of the popular program on PC and Android, who were already likely to have players installed, were unaware of taking the site down.
Neither the VLC media player nor the government has revealed why the media player was removed. However, several reports suggest that the move was taken after China-backed hacking group Sikda used the program for cyber attacks. Reports also said that the VLC media player was used by Sikda to deploy malicious code on target machines, as part of a larger cyber attack campaign.