OmanLaw on Copyright and Neighboring Rights, exceptions and absence of a text-and-data-mining exception
Royal Decree No. 65/2008, Arts. 4, 20
In force since .
A copyright and text and data mining (TDM) rule binding public and private bodies.
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- Do not rely on the Law's Article 20 free-uses list (quotation for clarification or criticism, personal or educational use, or a single lawfully-owned computer-program copy) to reproduce Omani-copyrighted text for training an AI or machine-learning model; none of them reaches that use, and the Law has no text-and-data-mining exception.
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
Criminal exposure note
Article 52 punishes copyright infringement, without prejudice to a more severe sanction under any other law, with imprisonment of three months to three years and a fine of 2,000 to 10,000 Omani Rial, or either penalty.
Penalty structure
Article 52's general infringement penalty: imprisonment of three months to three years and a fine of 2,000 to 10,000 Omani Rial, or either penalty.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- Currency
- OMR
- Fixed cap
- 10,000
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Article 20 lists lawful free uses (quotation, teaching, and similar) on condition that the source and author are named and that the use does not conflict with the normal exploitation of the work. Article 4 excludes mere data and official documents from protection. Neither article sets a duty to create, keep or produce a log or record, and the list contains no text-and-data-mining exception. The cited articles carry no territorial clause.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
Article 4 excludes mere ideas, procedures, working methods, mathematical concepts, principles, discoveries, and data from copyright protection, along with official documents and news of the day and current events that are mere journalistic information, though a compilation or arrangement of that excluded material is protected where it is itself distinguished.
Article 20 permits, without the author's consent, quoting paragraphs from a protected work lawfully made available to the public for clarification, explanation, or criticism, to the extent justified by that purpose, and permits the lawful owner of a copy of a computer program to reproduce a single copy for the purpose and extent the program was obtained, for archival purposes, or to replace a lost or destroyed copy.
Neither Article 20 nor any other section located creates a text-and-data-mining exception or a machine-readable reservation mechanism, so training a model on scraped Omani-copyrighted text or copying more than the narrow free-uses allowance rests on none of the Law's own exceptions.
Article 52 punishes copyright infringement, without prejudice to a more severe sanction under any other law, with imprisonment of three months to three years and a fine of 2,000 to 10,000 Omani Rial, or either penalty.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app crawls the web or trains models.
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