Saudi ArabiaCopyright Law (2026), circumventing technical protection measures
Royal Decree No. M/169 (14/8/1447H), Art. 47(5), Copyright Law (published )
In force since .
A copyright and text and data mining (TDM) rule binding public and private bodies.
- How the hook was established
- express
- What makes it apply
- Content origin
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- Do not circumvent, without justification, a technical protection measure that a rights holder uses to protect its rights in a work, performance, sound recording or broadcast programme; the offence carries imprisonment of up to one year and a fine of up to one million riyals, or either, without prejudice to any heavier penalty under another law.
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
What record it asks for
Logging duty
Article 47(5) of the Law makes circumvention of technical protection measures without justification an offence, with the penalty set in the lead-in to Article 47. It imposes no duty to create, keep, produce or review a log or record, and names no audit or anyone entitled to see a record. The Law's own scope clause (Article 2) reaches works of Saudi or resident authors and works first published in the Kingdom, and that content-origin test is the hook.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
Article 47(5) makes it an offence to circumvent, without justification, the technical protection measures that rights holders use to protect the rights in their works, performances, sound recordings or broadcast programmes under the Law. Article 47 punishes each listed offence with imprisonment of up to one year, a fine of up to one million riyals, or either, without prejudice to any heavier penalty another law sets.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app crawls the web or trains models.
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