Eritrea

Article 26 provides that the photograph or image of a person may not be exhibited in a public place, reproduced, or offered for sale without that person's consent. Article 27 excuses the consent requirement where the reproduction is justified by the person's notoriety, the public office they held, the requirements of justice or the police, a scientific, cultural, or didactic interest, or where the image concerns facts, events, or ceremonies of public interest or that took place in public.

Article 28 lets the person demand that an unauthorized exhibition or offer for sale be stopped, and lets the Court award damages, capped at the enrichment the user derived, with moral-prejudice damages available if the use does not stop once demanded.

Article 30 makes the contents of a confidential letter, electronic message, or other private communication inviolable: the addressee may not divulge its contents without the author's consent, though the addressee may produce it in judicial proceedings on a showing of a legitimate interest. The Civil Code was issued by the Ministry of Justice on 15 May 2015, and the Library of Congress describes the Eritrean government's position on whether the 2015 codes have taken effect as unclear.

Article 298(1) makes it an offence to intentionally, and without lawful authority, intercept, open, or otherwise interfere with a telephone call, letter, electronic message, or other private communication addressed to another person, or, having learned facts by mistakenly opening a communication not addressed to oneself, to divulge those facts or profit from them.

Violation of privacy is a Class 2 petty offence, punishable with imprisonment of 1 to 6 months or a fine of 5,001 to 20,000 Nakfas, set in intervals of 1,000 Nakfas. Article 298(2) makes prosecution conditional on the victim preferring charges. Article 3 of the Penal Code ties the Code's own entry into force to its publication in the Gazette of Eritrean Laws; the Code's own text does not state that Gazette date and carries no proclamation number of its own.

Article 374(1) makes it an offence for a person to intentionally obtain, directly or indirectly, any unauthorized computer service; intercept, by an electro-magnetic, acoustic, mechanical, or other device, any function of a computer system; alter or destroy data in a computer, render data meaningless, useless, or ineffective, or obstruct, interrupt, or interfere with the lawful use of data; or permit another person access to a computer password enabling such an offence, or otherwise deny or interfere with an entitled person's access to data.

Unauthorized use of a computer is a Class 2 petty offence, punishable with imprisonment of 1 to 6 months or a fine of 5,001 to 20,000 Nakfas, set in intervals of 1,000 Nakfas. Article 375 makes the same conduct against a public or financial institution a Class 8 serious offence, aggravated unauthorized use, punishable with imprisonment of 3 to 5 years, with no fine stated.

Because the offence's own heading and article 374(1)(a) tie the conduct to an unauthorized computer service, a scraper reading a public, unauthenticated page without defeating any access control falls outside a plain reading of the provision; the Council of Europe's Octopus Cybercrime Community country profile for Eritrea describes this Penal Code as the jurisdiction's substantive law on illegal access, illegal interception, and data interference, and does not identify any separate cybercrime statute.

Article 3 of the Penal Code brings the Code into force on the date of its publication in the Gazette of Eritrean Laws, and no Gazette publication day for it has been located.

Article 1157 gives the author of a work of the mind an incorporeal property right by the mere fact of its creation, and article 1158 lists literary, musical, figurative, and other works, including computer programs, as works of the mind.

Article 1168 lets articles of topical interest published in newspapers and reviews be reproduced in the press, whether printed or broadcast, unless the reproduction was expressly reserved, on condition the source is always clearly stated, and lets daily news articles on current events that are mere press information be freely reproduced; it also allows including a work in a short recording, showing, or announcement of it in a photographic, film, radio, or television report of current affairs.

Article 1169 lets the press freely reproduce speeches delivered in political assemblies, public meetings, or official ceremonies for fifteen days after they were made. Article 1171 provides that the author cannot forbid analyses and press reviews of the work.

Article 1172 provides that the author cannot forbid quotations from a lawfully communicated work where the quotation conforms to what may reasonably be accepted by social custom and the number and length of the passages quoted are justified by the purpose to be achieved, and states expressly that quotations include quotations from articles appearing in daily or weekly newspapers, weeklies, or other periodicals in the form of press reviews, with no fixed length or headline cap and not confined to short extracts.

Article 1161 excludes official legislative, administrative, or judicial texts from copyright protection and lets them be freely reproduced. The 2015 Civil Code renumbered the copyright articles that a repealed 1993 extract of the Provisional Civil Code had carried at articles 1647-1674. No Gazette-publication or commencement date for the Civil Code has been located.