Copyright Law, reproduction exceptions and computer programme adaptation
Copyright Law (Pyidaungsu Hluttaw Law No. 15/2019), ss. 18, 24, 26, 27, 29, 30
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.
Commencement not set.
A copyright and text and data mining (TDM) rule binding private bodies.
As of 6 September 2026.
What it requires
- Myanmar's Copyright Law carries no text-and-data-mining exception and no machine-readable opt-out mechanism.
- Reproducing a work beyond the Law's named exceptions (personal use excluding a whole or substantial database or book, quotation with attribution, teaching purposes, current-events reporting) requires the right holder's authorization.
- A lawfully owned copy of a computer programme may only be reproduced or adapted for the purpose for which it was obtained, for archival back-up, or to replace a lost or destroyed copy, and any such copy must be destroyed once lawful possession ends.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Private right of actionYes
Criminal exposure note
Reproducing, communicating to the public, or distributing a protected work for a commercial purpose and without the right holder's consent is punishable, on conviction, with imprisonment not exceeding 3 years or a fine not less than 1,000,000 kyats, or both (s. 82); a repeat conviction carries imprisonment from 3 to 10 years and a fine not exceeding 10,000,000 kyats (s. 83).
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
The Copyright Law grants the reproduction right at section 18(a) and then carves out narrow, named exceptions rather than a general fair-use or text-and-data-mining standard: personal-use reproduction of a part of a published work at section 24, expressly excluding reproduction of the whole or a substantial part of a book, a database in digital form, or a computer programme outside section 30's own terms; quotation of a lawfully published work with source and author attribution at section 26; reproduction of part of a published work or a newspaper or journal article for teaching purposes at section 27; and current-events news reporting and short-excerpt reproduction at section 29.
Section 30 permits a lawful owner of a computer programme copy to reproduce or adapt it only for the use for which it was obtained, for archival back-up, or for replacing a lost or destroyed copy, and any such copy must be destroyed once lawful possession ends. None of these provisions creates a text-and-data-mining exception or a machine-readable opt-out mechanism, so reproducing copyrighted text or a computer programme at scale to train a model has no exception of its own to rest on.
Reproducing beyond what these sections permit, for a commercial purpose and without the right holder's consent, is punishable under section 82 with imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 years or a fine not less than 1,000,000 kyats, or both, and the Copyright Law also allows the aggrieved person to pursue a separate civil case for damages.
The Law's own commencement is deferred to a date the President sets by notification; no such notification is among the sources cited for this instrument, so status is recorded as enacted rather than in effect.
When LexLint raises it
crawls_webtrains_models
Read the law
official English translation of the Copyright Law, Pyidaungsu Hluttaw Law No. 15/2019, WIPO Lex