Copyright Act, Fair Dealing and News Exceptions

Section 20(1) of the Copyright Act, 2022 excludes several acts from the exclusive rights conferred by sections 9 to 13, by way of fair dealing, including private use, parody, satire, pastiche, or caricature, non-commercial research and private study, and criticism, review, or the reporting of current events, subject to acknowledging the title and author where the use is public, except where the work is incidentally included in a broadcast.

The excluded acts also include the inclusion of an artistic work situated in a public place in an audiovisual work or broadcast, the incidental inclusion of an artistic work in an audiovisual work or broadcast, and reading or recitation in public or in a non-commercial broadcast of a reasonable extract from a published literary work, with acknowledgment. Separately excluded are quotations in the form of short excerpts from a work.

Also excluded is news of the day for public broadcast or publicly communicated by any other means. Section 20(1)(d)'s proviso conditions the criticism, review, and current-events exception on a fairness test weighing the purpose and character of the use, the nature of the work, the amount and substantiality of the portion used, and the effect of the use on the potential market or value of the work.

Section 20 carries no headline-length or short-extract cap distinct from these tests, and no reported Nigerian decision applies it to a systematic news aggregator rather than an individual quoting or reporting on a published work. Related rights under the Act, covering performers, sound recordings, broadcasts, and expressions of folklore, do not extend to a print or online news publisher's own reporting.