Lawyer Nguyen Quoc Cuong from Infinity Vietnam Law Firm told VietNamNet that the act of advertising falsely on the Internet may constitute many types of violations specified in a number of legal documents.

These could be violations of bans on certain advertising activities stipulated in Article 8 of the 2012 Advertisement Law, and bans on acts related to unhealthy competition as stipulated in Article 45 of the 2018 Competition Law.

In addition, depending on the severity of the offensive, violators may be criminally prosecuted for crimes such as "false advertisements" as stipulated in Article 197 of the 2015 Penal Code, "deceiving clients" as stipulated in Article 198 of the 2015 Penal Code, and "illegally giving or using information on computer networks and telecommunication networks" as stipulated in Article 288 of the code.

The violations are defined as either administrative or criminal depending on the severity and characteristics of the act.

In the case of administrative violations, Article 34 of Decree 38 says the prohibited acts such as advertising falsely, leading to misunderstanding about business capability, or product supply capacity of institutions and individuals, are subject to fines of VND60-80 million.

In the case of criminal prosecution, those who advertise falsely may be subject to up to 3 years imprisonment. They may also be fined VND5-50 million and banned from practicing or taking certain jobs for 1-5 years as stipulated in the 2015 Penal Code.

According to Cuong, some celebrities and artists post advertising content in a sophisticated form, such as sharing of personal experience, know-how and knowledge.

Appropriate agencies may face difficulties when proving if the act of providing information to the public is really an advertisement.

Hong Quang Minh, a media expert, said Vietnamese artists are prone to getting involved in false advertisement scandals.

Some brands don’t provide enough information about products and services to be advertised. 

Meanwhile, many artists lack knowledge or take jobs without thorough consideration. They just accept the jobs because of attractive remuneration.

“Most artists don’t have personnel in charge of checking cooperation terms and product quality. They just do this by feeling or experience. They advertise products because some friends and colleagues once did this before,” Minh said.

If violations are discovered, many foreign artists always quickly make announcements about their responsibilities and the relations of their names and products, which rarely occurs in Vietnam. However, now is the time for Vietnamese artists to start employing professionals to be in charge of advertisements.

Gia Bao