New ZealandCopyright Act 1994, Fair Dealing and No Text-and-Data-Mining Exception
Copyright Act 1994 (NZ), No 143, ss. 2, 42, 43
archived copy
Read from a public archive copy, not the publisher directly. The publisher does not serve this page to automated readers, so a direct fetch was not an option here; how we access sources. Archived . Publisher's page: https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1994/0143/latest/whole.htmlIn 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
- A use of a work is not infringing if it is fair dealing for criticism or review (with sufficient acknowledgement) or for reporting current events, or fair dealing for research or private study; training an AI model on copyrighted text does not fit either purpose as such, and no text-and-data-mining exception is available.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Private right of actionYes
Criminal exposure note
Under section 131(1), a person who knowingly makes for sale or hire, or in the course of a business offers for sale or hire, exhibits in public or distributes, an infringing copy of a copyright work, commits an offence, so selling or distributing scraped copyrighted text that falls outside fair dealing can be prosecuted. Copying for one's own use is not itself an offence. On conviction: a fine of up to NZD 10,000 for every infringing copy, up to NZD 150,000 for the same transaction, or imprisonment for up to 5 years (section 131(5)(a)).
Penalty structure
Section 131(5)(a): a fine of up to NZD 10,000 for every infringing copy to which the offence relates, up to NZD 150,000 for the same transaction, or imprisonment for up to 5 years. For the offences in section 131(2) and (3) the fine is up to NZD 150,000 or imprisonment for up to 5 years (section 131(5)(b)).
- Rule
- Per violation only
- As of
- Currency
- NZD
- Fixed cap
- 150,000
- Per violation unit
- Violation
- Per violation amount
- 10,000
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
Copyright owners enforce by civil action under section 120; section 131 makes the listed dealings in infringing copies offences punishable on conviction.
Settledness
- As of
- Open questions
- Does fair dealing "for the purposes of research or private study" in section 43(1) cover the copying of a work by a commercial developer to train a model?
- Does a scraped dataset count as a "table or compilation" under the definition of literary work in section 2(1) when the selection or arrangement of its contents is not original?
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Section 42 allows fair dealing for criticism, review and news reporting, with a sufficient acknowledgement for most forms, and section 43 allows fair dealing for research or private study. An acknowledgement credits the source to the reader and is not a record the user keeps. The row cites no text-and-data-mining exception because the Act has none. Neither section imposes a duty to create, keep, produce or review a log or record, and neither carries a territorial clause, so no hook value is set.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
Sections 42 and 43 permit fair dealing with a work for criticism, review, and news reporting, and for research or private study, but the Act carries no exception for text and data mining, so training a model on scraped copyrighted text must fit one of these narrow purposes or infringe.
Section 2's definition of literary work includes a table or compilation, so a scraped compilation of data can attract copyright as a literary work if its selection or arrangement is original, but the Act contains no separate sui generis database right, so a database that is a mere compilation of facts without originality in selection or arrangement receives no protection.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app crawls the web or trains models.
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