Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), Fair Dealing Exceptions and No Text-and-Data-Mining Exception
Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), No. 63, 1968, ss. 10, 40, 41, 41A, 42
A citation is an address, not a summary. The first part names the law; what follows narrows it to the exact section, article or paragraph.
In force.
A copyright and text and data mining (TDM) rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 6 September 2026.
What it requires
- A use of a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work is not infringing if it is a fair dealing for research or study, criticism or review, parody or satire, or reporting news; training an AI model on copyrighted text does not fit any of these purposes as such, and no separate text-and-data-mining exception is available.
If you get it wrong
Private right of actionYes
What it reaches
Obligation class
TDM
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Sections 40 to 42 permit fair dealing with a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work for research or study, criticism or review, parody or satire, or reporting news, but Australia has no general text-and-data-mining exception, and on 26 October 2025 the Attorney-General confirmed the Government would not introduce one, choosing instead to pursue a licensing-based approach for AI training.
Section 10's definition of literary work includes a table or compilation of words, figures or symbols, so a scraped compilation can attract copyright as a literary work if its selection or arrangement involves sufficient independent intellectual effort, but Australia recognises no separate sui generis database right of the kind the European Union has, so a database that is a mere compilation of facts without such effort receives no protection at all.
When LexLint raises it
crawls_webtrains_models
Read the law
official consolidated Act text, Federal Register of Legislation