Copyright and Performance Rights Act, 1994, fair dealing for reporting current events

Section 21(1)(c) provides that fair dealing with a work for the purpose of reporting current events does not infringe copyright, whether done in a newspaper, magazine, or similar periodical provided there is a sufficient acknowledgement, or by broadcasting, inclusion in a cable program service, or use in an audiovisual work, for which the Act states no acknowledgement requirement.

Section 21(1)(b) separately exempts fair dealing for criticism or review, provided there is a sufficient acknowledgement. Neither exception is capped at a headline-length or short-extract threshold. Whether either reaches a systematic aggregator's reproduction of headlines and snippets, as opposed to a newspaper's own current-events report, has not been tested in a reported Zambian decision.

Zambia has no separate press-publisher neighbouring right, no compelled platform-to-publisher bargaining regime, no recognised hot-news or misappropriation doctrine distinct from ordinary copyright law, and no located case law on hyperlinking or framed display.

The Act's definition of a compilation confers copyright, not a sui generis database right, on a compilation that is a product of creativity by reason of the selection or arrangement of its contents, and the Act predates the concept of a machine-readable text-and-data-mining reservation, so no opt-out mechanism of that kind exists either.