Expert: The concept of "General news website" should be abolished

The existence of the concept of “general electronic information site” in the Press Law can be seen as a form of encouragement for copyright infringement. Therefore, this concept should be removed from the Law.

General news websites are not allowed to produce their own content, so they often have to take content from other newspapers, which can easily violate press copyright. Illustration: Source: Internet.

At the expert consultation conference on the Press Law project organized by the National Assembly's Committee for Culture, Education, Youth, Adolescents and Children (abbreviated as UBVHGDTNTN&ND) on the morning of July 10, 2015 in Hanoi, journalist Huu Tho, former Head of the Central Ideology and Culture Committee, once again worried about the problem of "copy-pasting and copy-pasting journalism" in the context of the proliferation of electronic information aggregator websites.

Journalist Huu Tho analyzed: “Point 21, Article 4 of the draft Press Law stipulates that a “general electronic information page” is an electronic information page of an agency, organization, or enterprise related to press activities that provides general information based on verbatim and accurate citation of press sources and clearly stating the author’s name or the name of the press agency, the time the information was posted or broadcast.

But in reality, there are many websites that aggregate each article and then turn it into their own. The reputable websites are very sad about this situation, because they have to spend a lot of effort to create the news but then it is easy for others to cut and paste their content and it is difficult to handle.

"Cross-dressing and copy-pasting journalism is a huge danger. The definition in the draft is not complete and does not include the prohibition of copy-pasting information content. The draft Press Law should provide more detailed regulations to control the very common copy-pasting behavior."

Sharing the same view, Mr. Le Quoc Vinh, Chairman of Le Media Company emphasized: “General electronic information sites are the units that infringe the most on press copyright. The reason is that general electronic information sites are encouraged by law to infringe copyright.”

To clarify the above statement, Mr. Le Quoc Vinh said: “The existence of the type of electronic information synthesis site in the draft Press Law is unreasonable. The condition for licensing this media is “permission to copy at least 5 press agencies”. If electronic information synthesis sites are allowed to “rehash” press works, it will only encourage more copyright infringement.

In fact, no news organization (unless it is a very small one) would allow a website to copy their articles, because doing so would indirectly reduce the readership or traffic to the newspaper itself. Even if the author is paid, the damage is still significant.

General information websites are not allowed to create their own content, they will naturally copy and paste articles from other newspapers and cannot exist with only content from 5 newspapers. Because the number of general information websites is too large, the ability to prevent copying is very difficult. If the law is tightened, general information websites will have to create their own content, then it will violate the license.

With the above arguments, Mr. Le Quoc Vinh suggested: “It is necessary to consider eliminating the form of “general electronic information page” in the draft Press Law. Only press agencies are allowed to publish electronic information pages of a journalistic nature, whether they are electronic newspapers or specialized electronic pages. Other types of websites and electronic information channels belonging to organizations and individuals will be published and regulated according to the regulations of non-press media.”

According to Infonet