LexLint

Know the law your code answers to.

Law / Nauru

Nauru

3 of 5 named instruments researched to a stage, across three of the six areas of law we track: 3 in force. As of 19 September 2026.

  1. AI law none researched
  2. Privacy law 1
  3. Scraping law 1
  4. Cybersecurity law none researched
  5. Age gating law none researched
  6. News aggregation law 1

in forceenacted but not yet in forceproposedrepealed, withdrawn or blocked

Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.

Privacy law1 instrument, 1 in force

Research summary (206 words)

Nauru has no comprehensive data-protection statute and no dedicated data-protection supervisory authority.

The closest instrument is the Communications and Broadcasting Act 2018 (No. 21 of 2018), whose Part 8 binds a licensed communications service provider not to disclose a subscriber's information without the subscriber's written consent, gives a subscriber the right to require correction or removal of information about them, caps retention of subscriber information to billing purposes for up to seven years, and requires the provider to keep subscriber communications confidential; section 70 extends that confidentiality duty to the Nauru Communications Authority's own staff and to a provider's employees and agents, and sections 70 and 71 separately criminalise a person's unauthorised interception, use, modification, or disclosure of a subscriber's communications or information.

These duties bind only a licensed communications service provider's handling of its own subscribers, not personal data generally: the Act states no lawful basis or purpose limitation regime for a business's own processing of personal data outside the telecommunications sector, no special protection for sensitive categories or biometric identifiers, no data subject access, deletion, or portability right beyond the correction and removal right in section 48, no cross border transfer restriction, and no general breach notification duty running to a data protection authority.

Comprehensive regime

Communications and Broadcasting Act 2018, confidentiality of subscriber information and communications

Communications and Broadcasting Act 2018 (No. 21 of 2018), ss. 48-49, 70-71Official text of the Communications and Broadcasting Act 2018 (No. 21 of 2018)

archived copyRead 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 September 14, 2024. Publisher's page: http://ronlaw.gov.nr/nauru_lpms/files/acts/7fdfb6b20bbb42e23f5bb8daf48aa363.pdf

In force since 10 May 2018. Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Section 48(1) bars a service provider from disclosing information concerning a subscriber without the subscriber's written consent unless the Act or another written law requires or authorises the disclosure. Section 48(2) gives a subscriber the right to require a service provider to correct or remove information relating to them, with a right under section 48(3) to complain to the Nauru Communications Authority if the provider fails or declines to act.

Section 48(4) limits retention of a subscriber's information to billing purposes only, for no more than seven years. Section 49(1) requires a service provider to take all reasonable steps to maintain the confidentiality of subscriber communications, and section 49(2) bars it from intercepting, monitoring, altering, or modifying their content except as permitted or required by law.

Section 49(3) lets a subscriber ask the Chief Regulator to direct a service provider to monitor communications to the subscriber's own connections for tracing a harassing, offensive, or illegal call, and section 49(4) lets the Chief Regulator issue that direction. Section 70(1) extends the confidentiality duty to all communications and other information received from a subscriber, binding the Authority's staff and a service provider's employees and agents alongside the provider itself.

Section 70(2) makes it an offence for anyone outside that group acting lawfully in the course of duty to intentionally intercept, use, or disclose a subscriber's communications or information, punishable by a fine not exceeding $10,000 or imprisonment not exceeding two years, or both.

Section 71 separately makes it an offence, carrying the same penalty, for a staff member, service provider, or its employee, agent, or contractor to intentionally and without lawful excuse modify or interfere with the contents of a communication sent over a communications network, outside the proper course of their duties. These duties bind only a licensed communications service provider's handling of its own subscribers, not personal data generally.

What it requires

Scraping law1 instrument, 1 in force

Research summary (307 words)

Nauru has no scraping-specific statute, so general law governs each dimension separately.

The Cybercrime Act 2015 (No. 14 of 2015) criminalises unauthorised access under section 6, but that offence reaches only a 'protected computer', defined narrowly as one connected to the security, defence, or international relations of the Republic, a confidential law-enforcement source, communications, public-utility or public-key infrastructure, or public safety and essential emergency services, so a plain reading does not extend section 6 to scraping an ordinary public, unauthenticated website; section 9's data-espionage offence separately reaches obtaining data 'specially protected against unauthorised access', which could catch scraping conducted behind a technical access control.

No Nauruan court has ruled on the enforceability of a browsewrap or clickwrap terms of service against a scraper.

The Copyright Act 2019 (Act No. 17 of 2019) protects a compilation as an original work only by reason of the selection and arrangement of its contents, confers no separate sui generis database right, and grants no text-and-data-mining exception; its quotation exception in section 29 permits quoting a lawfully published work without authorisation only where the quotation is compatible with fair practice, does not exceed the extent justified by its purpose in a way that unreasonably prejudices the copyright owner's legitimate interest, and is used for the purpose of caricature, parody, or imitation, and section 41 separately prohibits circumventing an effective technological protection measure.

Nauru has no comprehensive data-protection statute; the Communications and Broadcasting Act 2018 (No. 21 of 2018) binds only a licensed communications service provider's handling of its own subscribers' information and communications, so it does not reach personal data scraped from a public website by a person who is not such a provider.

No Nauruan statute or reported case establishes a scraping-specific unfair-competition, misappropriation, or trespass doctrine, and none assigns legal weight to a robots.txt directive or imposes an AI-training-specific rule.

Computer misuse

Cybercrime Act 2015, illegal access to a protected computer

Cybercrime Act 2015 (No. 14 of 2015), s. 6 (illegal access)Official text of the Cybercrime Act 2015 (No. 14 of 2015), Republic of Nauru, in an Internet Archive capture of the RONLAW database's PDF

archived copyRead 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 January 27, 2024. Publisher's page: http://ronlaw.gov.nr/nauru_lpms/files/acts/a59d9691f5a195412b877493a2a95e8b.pdf

In force since 12 May 2015. Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Section 6 makes it an offence, punishable by imprisonment for up to seven years, for a person to wilfully and without lawful excuse access the whole or part of a 'protected computer'. The section defines a protected computer as one the offender knew, or ought reasonably to have known, is used directly in connection with the security, defence, or international relations of the Republic, or a confidential source of information relating to the enforcement of a criminal law.

It also reaches a computer used directly in connection with communications infrastructure, public utilities or public-key infrastructure, or the protection of public safety including systems related to essential emergency services. Because the offence's trigger is accessing a protected computer of that kind rather than any computer generally, a plain reading does not extend it to scraping an ordinary public, unauthenticated website that is not connected to those categories.

Section 9 separately criminalises data espionage, obtaining electronic data not meant for the offender that is specially protected against unauthorised access, which could reach scraping conducted behind a technical access control even where section 6 does not apply.

What it requires

News aggregation law1 instrument, 1 in force

Research summary (173 words)

Nauru has no press-publisher neighbouring right, no compelled platform-to-publisher bargaining regime, and no reported hot-news or misappropriation doctrine; general copyright law under the Copyright Act 2019 (Act No. 17 of 2019) governs an aggregator's reproduction of news content instead. Section 19(c) excludes 'news of the day or miscellaneous facts having the character of mere items of press information' from copyright protection outright.

Section 35 separately permits copying or communicating a newspaper article, periodical, or similar work, or excerpts of a work encountered while reporting a current event, for the purpose of reporting current events to the public, without the copyright owner's authorisation, provided the amount copied is no more than justifiable for reporting and the source and author are acknowledged; this exception does not apply to copying a newspaper article, periodical, or similar work where the copyright owner has expressly prohibited that use.

No reported Nauruan case addresses whether a hyperlink is a communication to the public or whether framing changes the answer, and the Act grants no text-and-data-mining exception or machine-readable opt-out.

This page covers the instruments LexLint has researched to a stage. Instruments named in the corpus but not yet researched are counted in the head and are not listed here. Every entry carries its own primary source on its note page. This is a research index, not legal advice.