Bahamas

Section 16A criminalises producing any child pornography, an offence liable to imprisonment for life, and separately criminalises receiving, disseminating or possessing child pornography, or intentionally causing or inciting a person under eighteen to be involved in pornography, each liable to imprisonment for twenty years.

Child pornography is defined as a photographic, film, video or other visual representation, whether or not it was made or transmitted by electronic or mechanical means, that shows a person who is, or is depicted as being, under eighteen engaged in explicit sexual activity, or whose dominant characteristic is the depiction of a sexual organ or the buttocks of a person under eighteen; the definition does not require the depicted person to be a real, identifiable individual, so a computer-generated or AI-synthesised depiction meeting it is capable of falling within the ban.

Section 16A was inserted by the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act, 2008 (No. 29 of 2008); the specific commencement date of that amending Act is not stated in the consolidated text read.

The Act binds a data controller established in The Bahamas, or one using equipment there to process data, to collect personal data by lawful and fair means, keep it accurate and up to date, hold it only for specified purposes, and secure it against unauthorised access. An individual may request access to personal data held about them within forty days. An individual may also have inaccurate data rectified or erased on written request.

An individual may require a controller to stop using their data for direct marketing. The Act does not apply to personal data kept for national security, information a controller is required by law to publish, an individual's own personal or household affairs, or pending legal proceedings.

The Data Protection Commissioner may prohibit a proposed transfer of personal data from The Bahamas to a place outside it where the recipient fails to provide protection, by contract or otherwise, equivalent to the Act's, having regard to the desirability of facilitating international data transfers and the risk of damage or distress to any person.

The prohibition is served by a written prohibition notice against which the affected person may appeal to the Supreme Court, and failing or refusing to comply with a prohibition notice without reasonable excuse is an offence.

The Data Protection Commissioner, a corporation sole, investigates complaints and may serve an enforcement notice requiring a data controller or processor to rectify or erase data or otherwise comply with the Act. A data processor who discloses personal data without the controller's prior authority, and a person who obtains or discloses personal data without authority, each commit an offence.

A person guilty of any offence under the Act is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, or on conviction on information to a fine not exceeding one hundred thousand dollars; the Act specifies no term of imprisonment for any offence.

Section 3 makes it an offence for any person, without authority, knowingly to cause a computer to perform a function for the purpose of securing access to a program or data, whether or not the act was directed at any particular program, data, or computer. Access is unauthorised if the person is not entitled to control access of that kind and lacks consent from someone who is, so authorisation, not the technical means of access, is what the Act tests.

Sections 5 to 8 separately criminalise unauthorised modification of computer material, unauthorised use or interception of a computer service, unauthorised obstruction of a computer's use, and unauthorised disclosure of an access code.

Section 9 imposes enhanced punishment where the computer accessed is a protected computer used for security, defence, confidential law-enforcement sources, banking, financial services, public utilities, public transport, public key infrastructure, or public-safety systems. The Act applies whatever the offender's nationality where either the accused or the computer, program or data was in The Bahamas at the material time.

A compilation, defined as a work formed by collecting and assembling pre-existing materials or data selected, co-ordinated or arranged so that the whole constitutes an original work of authorship, is a protected category of copyright work, and the term compilation includes collective works; the Act creates no separate sui generis database right beyond this originality-based compilation protection.

Copyright in a compilation extends only to the material the compiler contributed, not to the pre-existing material used, and does not enlarge or affect copyright in that pre-existing material. Unauthorised commercial dealing in an infringing copy, including importing it, possessing it in the course of business, or distributing it so as to prejudice the copyright owner, is an offence.

Section 58 permits fair dealing with a copyright work, including reproduction in copies for research, private study, scholarship or teaching, without infringing copyright. Section 59 permits fair dealing with a protected work for the purposes of criticism, comment, parody or review, or for the purpose of reporting current events, so long as the use is accompanied by sufficient acknowledgement; no acknowledgement is required for reporting current events by sound recording or audiovisual work.

Section 60 directs a court determining whether an act is fair dealing to consider all relevant factors, including the nature of the work and the amount and substantiality of the part used relative to the whole.