BulgariaCopyright and Neighbouring Rights Act (ZAPSP), Arts. 26e, 26zh and 26k, Text-and-Data-Mining Exception for Crawling and Training
ZAPSP crawling-training TDM exception (Закон за авторското право и сродните му права, Zakon za avtorskoto pravo i srodnite mu prava) chl. 26e, 26zh i 26k, izm. i dop. DV br. 100 ot 1 dekemvri 2023 g.
In force since .
A copyright and text and data mining (TDM) rule binding public and private bodies.
- Obligation class
- TDM
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- Honor an express, machine-readable rights reservation before relying on the general text-and-data-mining exception to reproduce or extract a lawfully accessed work, per ZAPSP Article 26e(4).
- A university, library, or scientific research institute mining for scientific research is not subject to that opt-out, per Article 26zh.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
In the frameworks
- NIST AI RMF
- MAP 4.1Approaches for mapping AI technology and legal risks of its components – including the use of third-party data or software – are in place, followed, and documented, as are risks of infringement of a third party’s intellectual property or other rights.
- NIST AI 600-1
- GAI-RISK-10Intellectual Property
- GAI-RISK-12Value Chain and Component Integration
- MIT mitigations Draft
- FINOS AIGF
- AIR-PREV-007Legal and Contractual Frameworks for AI Systems
- ETSI EN 304 223
- 5.2.4-2.1Minimum record for training data: its source, such as a page URL, and when it was collected.
Our reading of where this law's duties sit in each framework. It never says that running a control meets the law. How we read a framework against the law
Identifiers refer to ETSI EN 304 223 V2.1.1 (2025-12), © ETSI 2025, all rights reserved. ETSI owns the standard; no ETSI text (titles or sentences) is reproduced here. The standard is free to download from ETSI.
Who enforces it
Settledness
- As of
- Open questions
- Does a robots.txt directive or a metadata field count as 'технически средства, разпознаваеми от софтуера' under Article 26e(4), and does a prohibition stated only in written terms of use count?
- Is a work that a crawler reached by passing a login or a paywall one to which the crawler has 'правомерен достъп' under Article 26e(1)?
What it makes you log
Log retention
Article 26e(3) lets the results be kept as long as the analysis requires; under Article 26zh(5) research organizations may keep the results, and give third parties access to them, for the purposes and the period of the research, its verification and its evaluation.
- As of
- Basis
- Purpose bound
- Prohibits retaining
- Results of text and data mining under the general exception (copies and extractions) once they are no longer necessary for the automated analysis (Article 26e(3))
Logging duty
Article 26zh(6) obliges the research organizations and institutions that store results under Article 26zh(5) to use appropriate technical means to protect the stored information, and Article 26e(3) lets a person mining under the general exception keep the results for as long as the analysis needs. Neither clause requires a log or record.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
A person with lawful access to a work or other protected subject matter may reproduce it, or extract or reuse a database, without the rightsholder's consent or payment, for the purposes of automated text-and-data analysis, per Article 26e(1) and (2).
A rightsholder may prohibit that use, and for content made available online the prohibition is effective only where established by technical means recognizable by the software performing the analysis, per Article 26e(4), which is the opt-out a crawler must honor.
A separate exception in Article 26zh(1) and (3) covers universities and their libraries, scientific and research institutes, hospitals that conduct research, publicly accessible libraries, museums and archives, film and sound heritage institutions, and certain research organizations, performing automated text-and-data analysis for scientific research. Article 26zh is not limited by Article 26e, so the Article 26e(4) prohibition does not restrict it.
Article 26zh(4) excludes organizations controlled by a merchant that can have privileged access to the results of the research. Where a research user under Article 26zh has requested access, the rightsholder must provide it within 72 hours, per Article 26k(2).
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app crawls the web or trains models.
Back to the example · Lint your app
Page updated .