The Hanoi Department of Information and Communications just began its stricter management initiative on internet shops, due to the large number of violations in trade registration and using distorted and pornographic information.

According to the department’s inspectors, one-third of 800 internet shops recently checked had made such violations.

Duong Ky Lan, deputy director of the department, said that internet management was difficult because there were more than 2,500 internet shops registered, but they could not check the number of unregistered ones.

The department, in cooperation with the city police and other relevant departments, will make regular checks on the activities of internet shops, and has started to hold training courses on internet management skills for district and commune level officers so that they can assist the department to actively boost supervision on internet shops in their localities.

Lan said that if any violations were discovered, relevant authorities would have the right to punish the businesses according to the law.

Nguyen Ba Bo, a lawyer from the Hanoi Bar Association, said that the Government decree noted that fines related to trade registrations and the operation of internet shops could be up to 70 million VND (3,684 USD), 1.5 times higher than the previous level.

Specifically, fines of 1-2 million VND (52-104 USD) will be given for violations on regulations of fire prevention or operation times.

This figure will be raised to 50-70 million VND (2,631-3,684 USD) for internet shops that provide or do not prevent downloading information from websites with distorted or pornographic information, and those without liciences.

Hanoi People’s Committee has asked internet service providers to actively supervise internet shops’ implementation of their contracts, and stop providing services to violating locations.

Lan said that the department was also responsible for drafting legal documents related to the management of internet shops in the city, as well as the management tools to supervise the information posted on websites.

Nguyen Thanh Huyen, head of the Electronic Information Department of the Ministry of Information and Communications, said that the ministry would also assign more inspectors to make checks on the contents of websites to prevent the illegal ones as well as to ask software companies to work on new online games with healthy and useful content, originating from Vietnam’s traditional tales./.