Copyright Act, information-analysis exception (text and data mining)
Copyright Act, Act No. 48 of 1970, Art. 30-4 (inserted by Act No. 30 of 2018)
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 since 1 January 2019.
A copyright and text and data mining (TDM) rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 6 September 2026.
What it requires
- Reproducing or otherwise exploiting a copyrighted work, including to analyse or train a model on it, does not require the rights holder's authorization where the purpose is not to personally enjoy or let another enjoy the thoughts or sentiments the work expresses, and the exploitation is no more than necessary for that purpose.
- This exception does not apply where the exploitation would unreasonably prejudice the copyright owner's interests given the work's nature, its use, and the manner of the exploitation, and there is no machine-readable opt-out a rights holder can use to withdraw a work from it.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Criminal exposure note
Exploiting a work beyond the scope this exception (or another statutory limitation) permits is copyright infringement, punished by imprisonment with work for not more than ten years, a fine of not more than 10,000,000 yen, or both (Art. 119(1)).
Penalty structure
This is the general copyright-infringement penalty under Art. 119(1); an exploitation within Art. 30-4's scope is not an infringement at all, so the penalty attaches only to exploitation that exceeds it.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- 6 September 2026
- Currency
- JPY
- Fixed cap
- 10,000,000
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Article 30-4 permits exploiting a copyrighted work, by any method and to the extent considered necessary, whenever the purpose is not to personally enjoy or cause another to enjoy the thoughts or sentiments the work expresses, including reproduction for information analysis such as AI model training, unless doing so would unreasonably prejudice the copyright owner's interests given the work's nature and use and the manner of the exploitation.
No machine-readable opt-out mechanism exists for a rights holder under this article. The exception was inserted by Act No. 30 of 2018 and came into effect 1 January 2019. Exploiting a work outside the scope of this or another statutory exception is copyright infringement under Art. 119(1), punished by imprisonment with work for not more than ten years, a fine of not more than 10,000,000 yen, or both.
When LexLint raises it
crawls_webtrains_models
Read the law
official statute text, Japanese Law Translation portal (Ministry of Justice)