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.

I will do that again then.

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

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.

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

In this case we have not received any letter for VLC

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

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 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?

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

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.

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

It's never too late than never?

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

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.

> 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?

Non-profit, not firm.

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.

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.

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

Because India. Laws are merely guidelines here.

[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...

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.