DSM Directive, Article 4 (text-and-data-mining exception and rights reservation)

Directive (EU) 2019/790, Article 4

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What follows is LexLint's own research summary of this law, not legal advice.

In force since 7 June 2021.

A copyright and text and data mining (TDM) rule binding public and private bodies.

As of 14 August 2026.

What it requires

Check for machine-readable rights reservations (robots directives, metadata, terms) before mining or training on EU-accessible content
Skip or license content whose rights holder has opted out
Mine only content you access lawfully in the first place

If you get it wrong

Criminal exposureNo

Who enforces it

Enforcement body

National courts under each Member State's copyright remedies; the Directive names no enforcement authority of its own, and a rights reservation under Article 4(3) is enforced as a copyright matter in national law.

What it reaches

Obligation class

TDM

Also on the record

EEA status

Status: Pending
Joint committee decision number: 333/2023
Source link: https://www.efta.int/eea-lex/32019l0790
Decision date: 8 December 2023

What this law does

Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.

Article 4 requires Member States to provide an exception or limitation for reproductions and extractions of lawfully accessible works for the purposes of text and data mining, and paragraph 2 permits retaining those copies for as long as the mining requires.

Unlike the Article 3 exception, which is confined to research organisations and cultural heritage institutions acting for scientific research, Article 4 is limited by neither purpose nor actor, and recital 18 records that mining techniques are widely used by private and public entities alike, including for the development of new applications and technologies.

Paragraph 3 makes the exception conditional on the rightholder not having expressly reserved the use in an appropriate manner, which the Article illustrates as machine-readable means for content made publicly available online, so a reservation removes the exception rather than merely signalling a preference. Article 7(1) renders contractual override unenforceable for Articles 3, 5 and 6 but does not list Article 4.

When LexLint raises it

crawls_web
trains_models

Read the law

official consolidated Official Journal text, EUR-Lex

Every line above is drawn from the primary source linked here, read on the date shown. This is a research summary, not legal advice.

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