Vietnam is often accused of being an enemy of
media freedom because of its notorious record of jailing dissident bloggers and
blocking social networks. Its new Internet decree, which purportedly contains
several provisions that ban the sharing of online news stories, could be added
to the list of its crimes against the online community
Decree 72, or the "Management, Provision, Use of
Internet Services and Information Content Online", was signed by Prime
Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on July 15 but was only made public last week. It
immediately became controversial because of its confusing provisions that seem
to ban the sharing of news stories on various social networks.
For example, clause 20.4 states that a personal information
webpage is not allowed to provide aggregated information. But what exactly is
“aggregated information?” Tuổi Trẻ newspaper quoted Vietnam’s
Broadcast and Electronic Information Department which interpreted it as a
reminder for individuals not to “quote or share information from press agencies
or websites of government agencies.”
The report added that Deputy Minister of Information and
Communications Le Nam Thang said the new decree is intended to prevent the
spread of false information online. Thang said Decree 72 will help users "find
correct and clean information on the internet."
He added, “Personal webpage owners are only
allowed to provide their own information, and are prohibited from taking news
from media agencies and using that information as if it were their own.”
Is this an instruction and a warning to Vietnamese Internet
users not to write, retweet, or share news articles culled from public sources?
Exchanging of public information on social media is now deemed a criminal act?
For Reporters Without Borders, the decree is
simply “the harshest offensive against freedom of information.” The media
watchdog also described it as “nonsensical and extremely dangerous”
because “its implementation will require massive and constant government
surveillance of the entire Internet.”
For its part, Human Rights Watch is worried that the decree
will be used for “selective persecution.”
According to Phil Robertson of Human Rights Group, “This is a
law that will be used against certain people who have become a thorn in the
side of the authorities in Hanoi.”
Meanwhile, the Vietnam Committee on Human Rights rejected the decree as
“fatally flawed and inconsistent with international human rights law and
standards.”
But the government dismissed the
criticisms and claimed that as usual these “unfriendly” groups have misunderstood
the provisions of the law. During a press conference, Vietnamese authorities
explained that the decree, once implemented, would actually generate conditions
for the development of internet standards in the country. They also insisted
that the decree has no provision prohibiting individuals from sharing
information on social networks.
According to the government, the primary intent of the
decree – which has six chapters and 46 articles – is to protect intellectual
property rights and the copyrights of press agencies. Indeed, a rising number
of copyright infringement cases have recently alarmed many companies and
businesses. But Steven Millward of Tech in Asia thinks that Vietnam’s
new Internet decree is not fixing the problem.
“Vietnam seems to be striking at social media and individual
sharing rather than fixing the cause of the problem: content piracy by lazy
news sites. Surely media industry regulation would be a better move than this
kind of ban,” he wrote.
If media groups really misunderstood the provisions of the
decree, then the Vietnamese government has no one to blame but itself for using
vague terms. Or perhaps the use of broad categories was deliberate to sow
confusion and discourage Internet users from supporting online activities that
could be categorized as belonging to the prohibited acts of the decree.
Since the law will take effect on September 1, the
government still has enough time to scrap this confusing Internet decree and
draft a new one. But if they do so, maybe for a change the government should
consider consulting the local Internet community and other media stakeholders
which would be affected by the new regulation. The Diplomat
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