Presenting to the National Assembly the draft Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Publishing Law on the morning of August 5, Member of the Party Central Committee, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Lam Thi Phuong Thanh said that after more than 13 years of implementation, the Publishing Law has revealed some limitations and inadequacies, not keeping up with the development requirements of practice and not fully meeting the Party's new guidelines and orientations.
Therefore, amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Publishing Law is necessary to promptly institutionalize the Party's guidelines, ensure the unity of the legal system, remove difficulties and obstacles in practice and create a legal basis for publishing activities to develop in the new period.
In which, the Draft Law identifies publishing not only as belonging to 2 fields of culture and ideology but also as an economic - technology industry, an important part of the cultural industry, national knowledge infrastructure, a leading tool of education, training and promoting national soft power. This is an important political and legal basis for building publishing development policies in the digital age.
According to Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Lam Thi Phuong Thanh, the draft Law innovates content in the direction of shifting from pre-inspection to management based on data, post-inspection and the responsibilities of entities participating in publishing activities.
Further improve the full legal framework for publishing activities in the digital environment, including publishing industry data, digital platforms, publishing intermediary services, electronic publishing and artificial intelligence applications.
At the same time, the Law supplements the management, supervision, post-inspection, protection of copyright and handling of violations in the online environment, creating a foundation for the development of the digital publishing ecosystem.
In addition, the Draft Law supplements regulations to strengthen the protection of copyright, prevent and combat illegal printing of publications and protect publishers. In which, it expands the prohibited acts.
Accordingly, in addition to the prescribed acts, the draft supplements regulations prohibiting the storage for distribution or distribution of publications due to illegal copying, pirated or counterfeiting; prohibiting the publication and distribution of electronic publications that violate the provisions of the law on intellectual property.
The draft also supplements regulations prohibiting the provision or maintenance of distribution on intermediate e-commerce platforms for publications that have been suspended from distribution, recalled, confiscated, banned from circulation or destroyed; supplementing the prohibited act of not preventing or removing publications with content violating the law or infringing intellectual property rights on platforms and applications managed and operated by themselves.
In addition, the draft supplements regulations prohibiting the threat of life, mental harm, health, insult to prestige, honor, dignity or illegal obstruction of professional activities of editors and publishers; and at the same time prohibits the dissemination of published content in the online environment that is not subject to and does not meet the conditions according to the Government's regulations.
Presenting the appraisal report on the above draft Law, Member of the Party Central Committee, Chairman of the Committee for Culture and Social Affairs (UBVHXH) Nguyen Dac Vinh said that the Committee agreed with the necessity of amending and supplementing the Publishing Law; agreed with the scope of regulation and subjects of application of the draft Law.
The Committee for Culture and Social Affairs requests the drafting agency to continue to thoroughly review the provisions of law on management, provision and use of information on the network and related laws, ensuring no contradictions, overlaps and feasibility, comprehensiveness for publishing platforms, cross-border publishing platforms providing publications to the Vietnamese market.
Regarding prohibited acts in publishing activities, UBVHXH proposed to design prohibited acts more clearly, avoiding the emergence of many different understandings in practical application; ensuring the principle that human rights can only be restricted according to the provisions of law.
Regarding publication publishing activities, UBVHXH proposed that the drafting agency revise it in the direction of assigning the Government to detail the post-inspection mechanism in publication publishing.
