Copyright Act, 2016, quotation and current-events reporting exceptions

Section 39 permits, without the copyright owner's consent, the inclusion of quotations from a work in another work, including quotations from newspaper articles and periodicals in the form of press summaries, provided the work quoted has already been lawfully made available to the public and the quotation is compatible with fair practice and does not exceed the extent justified by the purpose.

Section 45 permits reproducing a work and making available to the public any work that can be seen or heard in the course of a current event, for the purpose of reporting on that event, by photography, cinematography or other means of communication, to the extent justified for an informative purpose. Neither section carries a headline-length or short-extract cap distinct from these fair-practice and informative-purpose tests.

The Act's Part VIII neighbouring rights also give a publisher, under section 82, a right against facsimile reproduction of the typographical arrangement of a published edition, lasting twenty-five years from the end of the year the edition was first published, but that right protects the printed page layout against photocopying rather than the underlying text, so it does not reach a news aggregator's reproduction of headlines or snippets.