Yahoo! denounced for violating Vietnamese laws

Hanoi Times - The Vietnam Software Association (Vinasa) and the Game and Digital Content Business Club have complained to the Ministry of Information and Communications about the operations of Yahoo! in Vietnam.

Vinasa said that according to Decision 27, all organisations must have a licence of the Vietnamese Ministry of Information and Communications to provide information o­n the Internet and have their own information websites. Websites of Yahoo! in Vietnamese which have .vn domain names are operating without licences.

According to Vinasa, Yahoo! is providing Yahoo! Mail in Vietnamese, Yahoo! Messenger in Vietnamese, Yahoo! Ask and Answer in Vietnamese, as well as Yahoo! Music in Vietnamese at Yahoo.com.vn though it doesn’t have an OSP licence.  

The association also said that Yahoo!’s licence to set up a representative office in Vietnam doesn’t allow the representative office to conduct business activities or any lucrative activities in Vietnam. 

Yet, Yahoo! has announced that four companies in Vietnam, Admax, FPT o­nline Advertising, GapIT and Golden, are Yahoo!’s authorised advertising agents in Vietnam. These partners will advertise and sell Yahoo’s o­nline advertising products to companies in Vietnam and exploit advertising sale services in Vietnam. 

Le Hong Minh, Vice Chairman of the Game and Digital Content Business Club, said Yahoo!’s above activities and similar activities of other foreign firms are worrying Vietnamese game and digital content service providers, who are trying to overcome difficulties and strictly obey the Vietnamese laws but have to compete against foreign rivals who are playing unfairly. 

Yahoo!’s representative office opened in HCM City in August 2007 and in a short period of time after that Yahoo! Began providing various services targeting the Vietnamese market.