“Internet Management Seminar in Vietnam” was organized on a small scale but was quite in-depth due to the participation of many experts and leaders from Vietnam’s Internet management and development agencies. The seminar focused on key topics: Updates on the legal documents and Internet policies in Vietnam, and discussions on concepts of International and Vietnamese Internet management.
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Mr. Nguyen Thanh Phuc, Deputy Director of the Institute for Information and Communication Strategy |
The seminar was organized by members of the Global Internet Policy Initiative (GIPI) Vietnam expert group, with the participation of representatives from IT law drafting agencies, e-commerce management, internet service providers (ISPs), online service providers (OSPs), and business representatives.
All delegates agreed on the current status that the legal documents regarding Internet management in Vietnam are insufficient. The draft IT law, which includes regulations related to the Internet, confirmation and amendment of information in e-commerce, website registration, etc., were also lively discussion topics.
Mr. Nguyen Thanh Phuc, Deputy Director of the Institute for Information and Communication Strategy and head of the IT law drafting team, explained the management policies regarding domain name and website licensing: “Vietnamese domains (.vn) do not require a license, while other international domains must seek permission from the competent authority“. However, some delegates considered this view “illogical,” suggesting it should be the opposite.
“New factors have emerged that require legal updates,” was a common agreement among many delegates. Specifically, Mr. Phuc pointed out that in the section on Information Safety and Confidentiality, Article 72 of the Electronic Transactions Law does not currently address a new form of network attack that has recently emerged: Denial of Service (DoS or DDoS) attacks.
In addition to improving legal documents, many other issues were discussed, such as: Why is Internet management not easy? What is the historical context? What are the international and regional trends in Internet management? However, delegates also acknowledged that these are issues that are “easy to discuss but difficult to implement.” Therefore, the challenge that Mr. Phuc presented at the end of his presentation still appears to be a tough question: “The legal environment needs to address issues arising from the unique characteristics of the online environment, especially the issue of consumer protection to ensure public trust, contributing to the development of e-commerce in particular and the Internet in general.”
Thế Phong