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Yahoo! Vietnam accused of unauthorized activities
The Vietnam Software Association (Vinasa), in a recent report submitted to the Ministry of Information and Technology, accuses Yahoo! Vietnam of violating the country’s digital content supply laws.
The document said Yahoo! Vietnam had not obtained permission to operate its news website, www.yahoo.com.vn.
In the document, Vinasa said the company’s activities in Vietnam were frustrating domestic IT and game companies.
Yahoo! Vietnam has been able to provide web services in Vietnamese such as Yahoo!Messenger, Yahoo!Answers and Yahoo!Mail – all without gaining the Online Services Provider permission other Vietnamese firms require.
Vinasa also questioned whether Yahoo! Vietnam should be taxed, given the enterprise has recently engaged four Vietnamese enterprises as advertising agents.
Yahoo.com.vn is a domain controlled by its parent company under a domain name system (DNS) located abroad.
It could take several years for domestic companies such as FPT, VinaGame and VTC to obtain permission to provide similar services.
These domestic companies must also make sure the information on their sites complies with Vietnamese culture.
So far, Yahoo! Vietnam has not been subjected to any kind of restriction.
Vu Minh Tri, general director of Yahoo! Southeast Asia, emphasized that Yahoo.com.vn and other Vietnamese web services were being managed from a server in Singapore.
Tri said Yahoo! Vietnam’s representative office in Vietnam was clarifying the case with the Ministry of Information and Communication.
Vinasa may be using the Yahoo! Vietnam case to illustrate the unfair battle between domestic and foreign IT firms when it comes to online business.
A high-ranking official from Vinasa told Thanh Nien that the association was not seeking any kind of government protection though domestic companies may end up losing market share to foreign firms.
“We want the game to be fair,” the official said.
“The business world is flat on the Internet. The government must take a different view when it comes to managing this kind of business so that our digital companies can continue flourishing.”
Thanhnien
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