JapanCopyright Act, information-analysis exception (text and data mining)
Copyright Act, Act No. 48 of 1970, Art. 30-4 (inserted by Act No. 30 of 2018)
In force since .
A copyright and text and data mining (TDM) rule binding public and private bodies.
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- Reproducing or otherwise exploiting a copyrighted work, including to analyse or train a model on it, does not require the rights holder's authorization where the purpose is not to personally enjoy or let another enjoy the thoughts or sentiments the work expresses, and the exploitation is no more than necessary for that purpose.
- This exception does not apply where the exploitation would unreasonably prejudice the copyright owner's interests given the work's type and use and the manner of the exploitation.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Criminal exposure note
Exploiting a work beyond the scope this exception (or another statutory limitation) permits is copyright infringement, punished by imprisonment for not more than ten years, a fine of not more than 10,000,000 yen, or both (Art. 119(1)).
Penalty structure
This is the general copyright-infringement penalty under Art. 119(1); an exploitation within Art. 30-4's scope is not an infringement at all, so the penalty attaches only to exploitation that exceeds it.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- Currency
- JPY
- Fixed cap
- 10,000,000
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Article 30-4 permits use of a work for purposes that do not involve enjoying its expression, including information analysis, to the extent necessary. It contains no clause requiring the user to keep, produce or review a log or record, and none requiring a record of any reservation by the right holder. The article has no territorial clause of its own.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
Article 30-4 permits exploiting a copyrighted work, by any method and to the extent considered necessary, whenever the purpose is not to personally enjoy or cause another to enjoy the thoughts or sentiments the work expresses, including reproduction for information analysis such as AI model training, unless doing so would unreasonably prejudice the copyright owner's interests given the work's nature and use and the manner of the exploitation.
The exception's only express limit is whether the exploitation would unreasonably prejudice the copyright owner's interests in light of the work's nature or purpose or the circumstances of the exploitation; official guidance from the Agency for Cultural Affairs treats defeating a technical measure such as robots.txt as one basis for finding that limit reached where the work is a database built and marketed for information analysis.
The exception was inserted by Act No. 30 of 2018 and came into effect . Exploiting a work outside the scope of this or another statutory exception is copyright infringement under Art. 119(1), punished by imprisonment for not more than ten years, a fine of not more than 10,000,000 yen, or both.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app crawls the web or trains models.
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