MyanmarCopyright Law, reproduction exceptions and computer programme adaptation
Copyright Law (Pyidaungsu Hluttaw Law No. 15/2019), ss. 18, 24, 26, 27, 29, 30
A copyright and text and data mining (TDM) rule binding private bodies.
- Obligation class
- Prohibition
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- Myanmar's Copyright Law carries no text-and-data-mining exception and no machine-readable opt-out mechanism.
- Reproducing a work beyond the Law's named exceptions (personal use excluding a whole or substantial database or book, quotation with attribution, teaching purposes, current-events reporting) requires the right holder's authorization.
- A lawfully owned copy of a computer programme may only be reproduced or adapted for the purpose for which it was obtained, for archival back-up, or to replace a lost or destroyed copy, and any such copy must be destroyed once lawful possession ends.
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.
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
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Private right of actionYes
Criminal exposure note
Reproducing, communicating to the public, or distributing a protected work for a commercial purpose and without the right holder's consent is punishable, on conviction, with imprisonment not exceeding 3 years or a fine not less than 1,000,000 kyats, or both (s. 82); a repeat conviction carries imprisonment from 3 to 10 years and a fine not exceeding 10,000,000 kyats (s. 83).
Penalty structure
Highest stated ceiling: section 83 punishes a repeat conviction with imprisonment of three to ten years and a fine not exceeding 10 million kyats. A first conviction under section 82 carries imprisonment not exceeding three years or a fine of not less than one million kyats, or both, with no stated ceiling on the fine.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- Currency
- MMK
- Fixed cap
- 10,000,000
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
The Intellectual Property Court hears the right holder's criminal or civil case (sections 73 and 76), and the Director General of the Customs Department suspends the release of suspected infringing imports on a right holder's application (sections 64 to 67).
Settledness
- As of
- Open questions
- Does "personal use" in section 24(a) cover reproduction of a part of a published work by an automated process to train a model?
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Section 24 lets a person reproduce part of a published work for personal use, within fair use; sections 26, 27, 29 and 30 permit quotation, teaching reproduction, news reproduction and a single copy or adaptation of a computer programme, and section 30 adds that an adapted copy is destroyed when lawful possession ends. These limit the copies a user may make; none requires the user to keep a log or record. Section 12 (scope of application by author nationality and place of first publication) is the Law's protection-scope clause and is not a territorial test on these exceptions, so the hook is empty. The registrar's register in Chapter XVI is a state record of voluntary registrations and sits outside the cited sections.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
The Copyright Law grants the reproduction right at section 18(a) and then carves out narrow, named exceptions rather than a general fair-use or text-and-data-mining standard: personal-use reproduction of a part of a published work at section 24, expressly excluding reproduction of the whole or a substantial part of a book, a database in digital form, or a computer programme outside section 30's own terms; quotation of a lawfully published work with source and author attribution at section 26; reproduction of part of a published work or a newspaper or journal article for teaching purposes at section 27; and current-events news reporting and short-excerpt reproduction at section 29.
Section 30 permits a lawful owner of a computer programme copy to reproduce or adapt it only for the use for which it was obtained, for archival back-up, or for replacing a lost or destroyed copy, and any such copy must be destroyed once lawful possession ends. None of these provisions creates a text-and-data-mining exception or a machine-readable opt-out mechanism, so reproducing copyrighted text or a computer programme at scale to train a model has no exception of its own to rest on.
Reproducing beyond what these sections permit, for a commercial purpose and without the right holder's consent, is punishable under section 82 with imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 years or a fine not less than 1,000,000 kyats, or both, and the Copyright Law also allows the aggrieved person to pursue a separate civil case for damages. No official copy of the notification bringing the Law into force has been located.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app crawls the web or trains models.
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