VietNamNet Bridge - The government has turned the green light on the establishment of a ‘.vn’ domain name market in Vietnam, but it has not set up a legal framework for the market to develop.

Business cannot go smoothly because of the lack of legal framework. 

The Prime Minister’s Decision No 38 released in 2014 allowed individuals and institutions to trade and auction ‘.vn’ domain names in September 2014. However, the market still cannot open because there is no platform for it.

Nguyen Minh Thai from Mat Bao Company confirmed that domain name transactions still cannot be carried out because of problems.

“There is no detailed regulation about the procedure for domain name transfer, the tax rate, tax collectors and transfer costs,” he said.

An analyst, agreeing with Thai, noted that domain name trading at this moment is impossible because people don’t know what kinds of domain names they can trade.

Chu The Anh from FPT International Telecom also commented that the legal framework is unreasonable and inconvenient, because  involved parties have to face high risks.

At present, there is only one way to transfer a domain name from an old owner to the new owner: the old owner cancels the domain name and then the new one registers the same domain name. A problem may occur that a third person would register the domain name right after the old owner cancels the domain name while the owner has not registered it.

“The domain name disputes occur regularly because there is no detailed regulation about the domain name transfer,” he said.

Nguyen Trong Khoa, a freelance domain name trader, noted that though a lot of domain name trading floors have been set up, they have not been operating effectively because of the stipulated procedures.

Solutions needed

The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) at the VNNIC’s (Vietnam Internet Network Information Center) 6-month review meeting requested VNNIC to release the circular on domain name auctioning in 2015. 

It was also asked to create other necessary legal documents to be sure that the Prime Minister’s decision on domain name trade can be brought into life.

The center said it has completed the compilation of the circular on transferring the domain names not to be implemented through auctions.

Anh from FPT International Telecom thinks that the domain name trading mechanism should be like the one of securities trading.

Under the mechanism, VNNIC would serve as the management agency, which would regulate the operation of the market members – brokers, traders and businesses.

According to VNNIC, the number of ‘.vn’ domain names has been increasing rapidly. 318,812 ‘.vn’ domain names had been registered.  

NLD