Under a Vietnamese government decree taking effect from Monday, organizations and individuals are allowed to auction or transfer the right of using internet domain names, which is believed to boost the country's fledgling domain name market.

"Before Sept. 1, sales and transfer of Vietnamese domain names took place unofficially, privately, posing many risks to buyers. Now, transactions will be conducted publicly via trading floors; participants will know price ranges as well as real values of domain names," Ms. Nguyen Thi Quyen, Sales Manager of Hanoi-based Nhan Hoa Software Company, one of Vietnamese domain name registrars, told Xinhua on Sunday.

If Vietnamese domain name registrars and relevant entities such as the Vietnam Internet Center under the Ministry of Information and Communications promote the application and the tapping of commercial value of domain names, the local domain name market will attract more and more organizations and individuals, Quyen said.

"Some domain names are changing hands with prices of thousands, even tens of thousands of U.S. dollars," she said, noting that the original prices are around dozens of U.S. dollars.

A 37-year-old local man named Nguyen Trong Khoa, who currently lives in Ho Chi Minh City, and is dubbed by local press as "The Vietnamese king of domain names", told Xinhua that in Vietnam, there has been an increasing number of domain name trading floors.

"I hope that Vietnam will have fully-fledged trading floors like Sedo.com and others in the world," he said.

According to him, all stakeholders will benefit from the new government decree, including investors, buyers and the State. Firms and agencies will buy back domain names they want at auctions, investors find potential buyers more easily, and the State will collect new fees and taxes.

"BKAV Corporation (a Vietnamese anti-virus software developer, with its BKAV flagship product installed on most of computers in Vietnam) bought back the domain name bkav.com at the price of VND2. 3 billion (nearly USD 110,000) in early 2012," Khoa said.

Xiaomi, a phone company in China was reported to buy the domain name mi.com at the price of 3.6 million U.S. dollars, he added.

Khoa advised Vietnamese people, especially those who hold important positions, to register some international and local domain names resembling their full names, to prevent media crises which stem from imposters.

"Government agencies should pay due attention to this issue, because the money needed to maintain domain names each year is less than two million dongs (around 950 U.S. dollars), while many domain names are of importance, such as those resembling names of lands and seas," he said.

The Vietnam Internet Center said that Vietnam has already had concrete regulations on managing and using internet resources, with protection priority given to certain groups of Vietnamese domain names.

They include domain names relating to operations of Party organizations, state agencies, sovereignty, interests, national security as well as names of Vietnamese border communes and districts, islands, archipelagos, sea waters, etc.

However, the center's officials recommend Vietnamese organizations and individuals to sign up domain names in close connection to them as soon as possible to serve their work and prevent potential ownership disputes.

Ms. Hoang Thi Vy, a lecturer of English at the Hanoi University of Business and Technology, said she would register for some Vietnamese domain names although local registration and maintenance fees are a little bit higher compared with international domain names.

"I will use them (Vietnamese domain names) as birthday gifts for my beloved and close friends, because they are spending more and more time online," she said. The lecturer said she might opt for Vietnamese domain names having marks for tones, because Vietnam has offered such kind of names free of charge over the past three years.

As of late August, Vietnam had had one million Vietnamese domain names having marks for tones, becoming the nation having the biggest number of domain names using the indigenous language in the world, the Vietnam Internet Center announced at the end of August.