Copyright Act, Fair Use Exception
Copyright Act 2021, ss. 190-191 (Fair Use)
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 21 November 2021.
A snippet reproduction rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 7 September 2026.
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Section 190 makes it a permitted use of a work, or of a protected performance or a recording of one, to make fair use of it. Section 191 lists the relevant matters for deciding fairness. These include the purpose and character of the use, including whether it is commercial or non-profit and educational, and the nature of the work. They also include the amount and substantiality of the portion used relative to the whole.
A further matter is the effect of the use on the potential market for, or value of, the work. The Act carries no separate quotation or news-summary exception, no headline-length or short-extract cap, and no press-publisher neighbouring right of the kind the European Union's Digital Single Market Directive Article 15 creates.
Whether reproducing a headline or a short extract from another outlet's reporting is a fair use turns on this general four-factor test, and no reported Singapore decision has applied it to a systematic news aggregator. Sections 190 and 191 fall outside the two carve-outs in the Act's own commencement clause, so they came into force with the rest of the Act on 21 November 2021.
When LexLint raises it
aggregates_content