On the morning of August 9, at the first non-scheduled session, the National Assembly discussed in the hall the draft Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Publishing Law.
The concept of publishing should not be associated with the obligation to keep the book.
Contributing opinions to the draft, delegate Nguyen Thi Viet Nga - Deputy Head of the National Assembly Delegation in charge of Hai Phong City said that it is necessary to accurately re-determine the content of the concept of "publishing", and should not consider depositing and keeping as a constituent part of the publishing process.
In Clause 1, Article 4 of the draft, after acceptance, "publishing" is defined as the process of forming a sample for printing or creating electronic publications "and fulfilling the obligation to submit to the deposit".
The delegate analyzed that, in essence, the exploitation of manuscripts, editing, design, manuscripts and publishing decisions are the stages of creating publications. Retention is a management obligation arising for publications after they have been formed, in order to serve state management work. Article 28 of the draft has also designed retention into an independent institution and clearly defines the submission of retention as transferring publications or electronic files to state management agencies.
If bookkeeping is considered a part of the publishing process itself, the question arises: has the publication been created and has a publishing decision but has not been submitted for bookkeeping, is it legally "published"? This may affect the determination of the time of legal rights, obligations and responsibilities" - delegate Viet Nga said.
From the above analysis, the delegate proposed to remove the phrase related to depositing into the register from the concept of "publishing" in Article 4 and to leave the entire institution of depositing into the register in Article 28, not to merge two different legal stages into one concept.
Recalling must be linked to post-inspection and interconnected data
Regarding the depository mechanism, especially electronic publications, delegate Nguyen Van Manh (Phu Tho delegation) said that the draft should clearly stipulate the issuance time after completing the depository submission, as well as the handling method when the depository is different from the issued copy.
According to the delegate, the submission for backup must be a complete copy, identical to the issued copy. For electronic copies, it is necessary to include a test code for integrity, storage format and specific data. All content changes after backup must be recorded and submitted back according to the level of change.
The electronic recording system also needs to automatically confirm the receipt time, ensuring safety and confidentiality for unpublished publications and long-term preservation capacity. At the same time, it is necessary to clearly define the responsibility for coordinating and sharing data between the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, localities and the National Library of Vietnam, avoiding duplication of submission.
Regarding management decentralization, delegate Nguyen Van Manh said that the spirit of decentralization to provincial and commune-level People's Committees is appropriate, but it needs to be linked to capacity standards, interconnected data and monitoring mechanisms. Because publications can circulate nationwide or on the internet, the licensing agency must be responsible for updating results to the national database.
Regarding the authority of communes in the field of printing, distribution locations and exhibitions, fairs, delegates proposed to assess the skills of officials, workload and level of risk. Activities with foreign elements, inter-provincial scale or complex content should be assigned to provincial or ministry levels for handling; communes mainly receive declarations and check normal conditions according to regulations.
