Sharing articles online will result in a fine of up to 30 million VND: Management agency clarifies

Will sharing an article link result in a fine of 30 million VND?

According to Point d, Clause 1, Article 95, Decree 174/2026/ND-CP, the act of taking advantage of social networks to provide and share journalistic works without the consent of the intellectual property rights holder can be fined from 20 to 30 million VND. In addition to fines, violating individuals and organizations are also forced to remove infringing content.

This regulation makes many social network users wonder: Is sharing an article on Facebook, Zalo or other platforms considered copyright infringement?

At the preliminary conference on the field of electronic information in the first 6 months of the year, Mr. Le Quang Tu Do, Director of the Department of Radio, Television and Electronic Information, clarified this issue.

According to Mr. Tu Do, first of all it is necessary to properly understand the concept of "journalistic work". This concept has been stipulated in the Press Law since 2016 and by the 2025 Press Law will remain almost unchanged, unchanged in essence.

The question is how the act of "providing and sharing journalistic works without permission from the press agency" should be properly understood.

The first case that many people are interested in is sharing the article link.

According to Mr. Le Quang Tu Do, the link is not a journalistic work. When a user shares a link, if the reader clicks on it, it will be taken to the press agency's page. Therefore, sharing the article link does not violate copyright.

The second case is sharing a link with part of the content of a journalistic work.

According to Mr. Tu Do, quoting all or part of the content of a journalistic work is a copyright violation, if the recitation of that content has not been approved by the press agency.

A more complicated problem is the "cooking" of articles.

According to Mr. Tu Do, this is a situation where an individual or organization does not copy verbatim, but takes the main idea, structures the information, and then rewrites it into a content with different sentences.

According to Mr. Le Quang Tu Do, this case needs to be analyzed in very detail.

"In case it is original information and only one press agency has it, it is a copyright violation," Mr. Tu Do emphasized.

If it is popular information, it will be published by many press agencies and social networks. For example, the information that Hanoi is hot at 40 degrees Celsius, or that an accident has occurred, the person posting the content is not violating copyright.

However, if the news written by a press agency contains effort and unique characteristics, sharing it without permission is a copyright violation.

Mr. Tu Do used the same example as the story of Hanoi being hot at 40 degrees Celsius. The hot weather information itself is common information.

But if an article has the reporter's own efforts, such as interviewing experts to analyze why the heat lasts so long and how it affects health, that is the reporter's effort.

If a social network account takes an expert's analysis or interview details and reposts it without permission, it will be considered a copyright violation.

The situation of "journalism" on social networks is complicated

Although "reporting" has decreased on general electronic sites, it is appearing in new forms through Fanpages, TikTok channels, and YouTube channels with large numbers of followers.

This is the sharing of Ms. Nguyen Thi Mai Huong - Deputy Director of Hanoi Department of Culture and Sports at the Conference.

According to Ms. Mai Huong, some entities take advantage of algorithms to exploit sensational and controversial content to increase interaction and advertising revenue.

The Hanoi Department of Culture and Sports has recently strengthened management and rectified the situation of "journalization" of general electronic information sites and social networks.

Accordingly, the department refused to license domain names that could easily be misunderstood as press agencies. For misleading domain names that have been licensed and are about to expire, the department has issued a notice requesting urgent conversion to new domain names.

Also according to Ms. Mai Huong, units are required to strictly comply with regulations on indicating sources of information and clearly stating the time of publication to avoid causing confusion with press agencies. In particular, it is strictly prohibited to post investigative reportage content contrary to regulations.

The Department also regularly reviews to recommend handling and revoking licenses for electronic information sites that expire or no longer meet the conditions.

However, according to Ms. Mai Huong, the digital environment is posing many challenges as the speed of development far exceeds traditional management capabilities. Violations are no longer concentrated on general information websites but have shifted strongly to social networks, short videos, livestreams and community groups.

Managing cross-border platforms is still difficult because servers and service providers are located outside of Vietnam. Many accounts use virtual identities, the amount of content generated every day is huge, causing great pressure on supervision.

Sharing at the conference, Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen - Deputy Director of the Department of Radio, Television and Electronic Information said that the orientation for the last 6 months of the year will be to strengthen the review and processing of newspaper content on social networks.

According to Ms. Thanh Huyen, we previously had management regulations but no sanctions to handle this issue, because the sanctioning decree was issued behind schedule recently.

"Currently, Decree 174 has also been issued and is a basis for perfecting the institutional facilities to manage this field. We will focus on reviewing to strengthen handling of the newspaper and chemical fields," Ms. Thanh Huyen said.