A 30 Million Đồng Fine for Sharing News in Việt Nam: Effects on Copyright Protection and Journalism

A new government regulation has triggered widespread public anxiety in Việt Nam, introducing administrative fines of 20 million to 30 million đồng—approximately 760 to 1,140 USD—for providing or sharing copyrighted journalistic works on social media without permission.

For millions of social media users, clicking a share button or copying a few lines of an interesting news piece is a daily habit. The realization that this ordinary online behavior could now result in steep financial penalties has sparked panic.

This shift raises several major questions: Are daily news articles subject to intellectual property protection? Is the public’s right to access information being systematically narrowed? Will journalism gradually lose its role in disseminating information and monitoring society?

The Scope of Intellectual Property Protection for Daily News 

The aforementioned regulation originates from Decree 174/2026—covering administrative penalties in postal services, telecommunications, electronic transactions, and information technology—issued by the Vietnamese government on May 15, 2026, and effective from July 1. [1] 

Authorities justify this rule by citing the need for “protecting intellectual property” and limiting “profiting from the efforts of others.” [2]

However, a closer examination questions whether daily news reports are truly subject to intellectual property protection, exposing a potential conflict between this new regulation and Việt Nam’s current legal framework.

While authorities may rely on Clause 1, Article 14 of the Intellectual Property Law to argue that journalistic works are protected copyright material [3], the reality is not that simple. Article 15 of the same law explicitly stipulates that “purely factual news” falls outside the scope of copyright protection. 

Because news reports are based on “objective events,” no individual or organization can legally claim ownership over them. If such protection existed, the first news outlet to report an earthquake could prohibit all others from doing so, thereby severely restricting access to information.

This principle is echoed internationally in the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. Article 2(8) states, “The convention does not apply protection to news of the day or events that are purely journalistic in nature.” [4]

This raises the question of what exactly intellectual property protects. The answer lies in the fundamental concept of global intellectual property law: the idea-expression dichotomy. This principle dictates that the law protects the expression of an idea, rather than the idea itself. 

Thus, the press only holds copyright protection over its “creative imprint”—the specific writing style, word usage, article structure, and framing of an issue.

The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) affirms this standard. As Article 9(2) states: “Copyright applies only to forms of expression and not to individual ideas, processes, methods of operation, or mathematical concepts.” [5]

Preserving the Core Functions of Journalism

Amidst public uproar over the new regulations, Lê Quang Tự Do, Director of the Department of Radio, Television, and Electronic Information (Ministry of Information and Communications), shared examples with Tuổi Trẻ newspaper regarding what constitutes copyright infringement. [6] 

He clarified that sharing an article link does not violate copyright but stated, “the case of sharing a link along with part or all of the content of an article without the consent of the newspaper’s editorial office is copyright infringement. In the case that the press agency does not agree to the sharing, it may be subject to penalties.”

Regardless of his authority to interpret the regulation, his response has raised serious concerns about the future role of reporting. 

A fundamental mission of journalism is bringing information to the masses. This access to knowledge cannot be confined to a specific demographic nor limited by age, gender, or social class. Yet, by allowing only the sharing of links and prohibiting the copying of even a portion of the content, this regulation inadvertently creates a barrier to the spread of news.

This manifests in three ways. 

First, restricting users to bare links significantly reduces public curiosity. Social media thrives on quick browsing, and users are often reluctant to click external links due to slow loading times or advertisements. [7] Without a summary or compelling excerpt, click-through rates will plummet, meaning the news will reach far fewer people. 

Second, the regulation threatens to kill the culture of debate essential to the flow of information. An article’s impact relies heavily on the public’s ability to discuss it. If readers cannot quote a valuable passage—or one they strongly disagree with—they lose the ability to meaningfully express their opinions. Ambiguous penalties will create a chilling effect, leading readers to avoid sharing news or even blocking media pages to escape legal trouble. [8] [9] For journalism to fulfill its basic function of information dispersion, governments must support, rather than penalize, readers who spread the news.

Third, the new rules hinder journalism’s role in promoting social criticism and supervision. When information dissemination drops, the public has less material to analyze and critique. The supervisory power of journalism depends not just on an article’s existence, but on its reach. No matter how valuable an investigative report is, it remains dormant on a website if it cannot be actively discussed on social media. Without public knowledge, issues that demand accountability will easily be ignored because they do not generate sufficient outcry.

A clear illustration of this is the child abuse case at the Hoa Hồng Orphanage in Hồ Chí Minh City, exposed by Thanh Niên newspaper in September 2024. [10] The public was horrified by images of nannies beating, slapping, and stomping on infants. The facility was also found to be profiting by vastly exceeding its capacity, housing 86 children despite only being licensed for 39. [11]

When Thanh Niên published its investigation on the morning of Sept. 4, 2024, clips and excerpts were immediately shared across TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube. Fueled by this undeniable evidence, the resulting pressure from public opinion forced immediate government action. 

That same day, authorities in District 12 and the Department of Labor, War Invalids, and Social Affairs sealed the facility. [12] All 86 children were urgently relocated to public welfare centers like Tam Bình Center and Thủ Đức Youth Village for medical care. [13] 

Furthermore, the Hồ Chí Minh City Police swiftly prosecuted the case, detaining the owner and caregivers for “torturing others” under Article 140 of the Penal Code. [14]

If Thanh Niên’s exposé had been published under these new, stricter regulations—where citizens were prevented from sharing excerpts, clips, and images online—one must ask if the outcome would have been the same. Without the amplification of public opinion on social media, the voice of the press loses much of its power.

Management Through Prohibition 

A gray area emerges within this decree. The new regulations depend on a clear definition of vocabulary that its authors have not actually outlined. Specifically, the law fails to distinguish between what constitutes a protected “journalistic work with a distinctive form of expression” and what is merely unprotected “purely factual news.”

For instance, a news update stating, “District 12 police inspect the Hoa Hồng Shelter and discover violations,” is purely factual. It is not protected under intellectual property laws, meaning anyone has the right to copy and share this information. 

However, by issuing a blanket document that prohibits copying “part of the article’s content,” regulatory bodies risk penalizing the sharing of all journalistic genres.

Legally, a protected “journalistic work” should only refer to pieces with high creative value, such as analytical articles, feature stories, and investigative reports. Yet, the ambiguity of the new policies allows them to be interpreted as covering objective news and events, inevitably leading to arbitrary enforcement.

Why would lawmakers ignore the fundamental distinction between an “idea” and its “form of expression”? The answer likely stems from an administrative inability to manage this issue. 

Faced with the complexities of press copyright, the government appears to have defaulted to a familiar mentality: “if it cannot be managed, then it is banned.” 

By conflating two distinct forms of journalism, the state relies on the logic that it is “better to catch the wrong person than to let the guilty one go free.” 

As a result, they have introduced an extreme sanction through a vague administrative document that bypasses basic global legal principles.

This approach poses a severe threat to the public’s right to access information—a constitutional right explicitly stipulated in Article 25 of the 2013 Constitution. [15] 

Furthermore, such a heavy-handed regulation was entirely unnecessary, as copyright infringement in journalism already possesses an existing regulatory mechanism. If an editorial office believes that a user has illegally utilized its article and caused economic damage, it can simply file a civil lawsuit for compensation. 

This is how a society governed by the rule of law naturally operates; the state’s only role should be ensuring that the litigation process is efficient and thorough.

This unnecessary government interference and the chilling impact of the new regulations force the public to ask: “Was this regulation truly created to ‘protect intellectual property,’ or was it a sophisticated mechanism for the censorship of free speech all along?”

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Đan Thanh wrote this article in Vietnamese and published it in Luật Khoa Magazine on July 3, 2026. The Vietnamese Magazine has the copyrights to the English translation.