Copyright Law, Computer Program Protection and Use-Without-Permission Exceptions
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 7 September 2026.
What it requires
- Do not copy, adapt, or otherwise use a copyrighted work, including a computer program, beyond the nine listed permission-free cases (personal or family use, library or archive preservation, school education, state management, press introduction, quotation, free performance, public-place copying, and Braille or sound recording for the blind).
- There is no machine-readable opt-out or text-and-data-mining exception; training on copyrighted North Korean text or software rests only on whether one of the nine listed cases applies.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Criminal exposure note
Criminal Code Arts. 199 and 200 impose up to 2 years of labour-training (up to 3 years of labour-reform in serious circumstances) for wrongly evaluating and suppressing another's authorship, invention, or creative design, or for publishing another person's authorship, invention, or creative design under one's own name for self-interested purposes; the Copyright Law's own Art. 47 refers infringement generally to administrative or penal responsibility without stating an amount.
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 9(8) of the Copyright Law lists computer programs among the objects of copyright, so copying or adapting a program without permission falls under the Law's general infringement rules. Article 32 permits use of a copyrighted work without the copyright holder's permission only in nine listed cases, including reproduction or translation for individual or family use.
The other eight cover reproduction for preservation, display, reading, or lending in a library, archive, museum, or memorial hall, copying, broadcasting, or adapting for school education, copying, broadcasting, or use for compilation needed for state management, broadcasting or carrying in a newspaper or periodical for the purpose of introduction, quotation, free performance, copying of a work in a public place, and sound-recording or reproduction in Braille for blind people.
None of the nine is framed as a machine-readable reservation or opt-out, so the Law carries no text-and-data-mining exception of that kind.
When LexLint raises it
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