Libya

Article 73 of Law No. 6 of 2022 requires a public entity or an authentication service provider to obtain a person's explicit consent before collecting their personal data, and confines any collection to the purpose of issuing, maintaining, or facilitating a certificate, absent the person's further explicit consent to a different purpose.

Article 74 lists narrow grounds on which collecting, disclosing, or processing personal data is otherwise lawful, including a criminal investigation, a court order, a tax assessment, or protecting a person's vital interest.

Article 75 binds the authentication service provider to keep personal data confidential and bars disclosing, transferring, or publishing it without the data subject's prior consent, and article 76 requires any person who controls personal data by virtue of their work in electronic transactions to give the data subject notice, before processing, of who is responsible for the processing and the nature, purpose, and method of the processing.

Article 77 requires the authentication service provider to let the person whose data was collected access and update it, including all personal data sites related to them, through appropriate technological means. Article 78 requires due consideration of the nature of the data, its source, the purpose and duration of processing, and the destination country's laws and security measures before personal data is transferred outside Libya.

Article 79 bars sending electronic documents to a person who has explicitly refused them, bars processing personal data against the data subject's explicit refusal, and bars using personal data for a purpose other than the one agreed to without the data subject's consent; article 81's criminal penalties are stated for the offences article 80 lists, and the text does not clearly extend that penalty to article 79's restrictions on personal-data processing.

Article 11 of Law No. 5 of 2022 makes accessing a computer system, information system, information network, or website unlawful only where its protection measures are intentionally breached, wholly or partially, without authorization or in violation of an authorization.

Article 12 punishes unauthorized access with up to one year's imprisonment or a fine of 100 to 500 Libyan dinars, rising to at least one year and 500 to 5,000 dinars where the access deletes, alters, discloses, or copies data or disables or defaces a system, and to imprisonment and a fine of no less than 10,000 dinars where the access disables an information system or disrupts a network's operation.

Article 10 separately prohibits influencing an electronic system, network, or record by obtaining, disclosing, transmitting, or publishing a password, code, or other confidential data with intent to gain an unauthorized benefit or harm another.

Article 13 punishes intercepting an information system to obtain digital data with at least one year's imprisonment and a fine of 1,000 to 5,000 dinars, and article 14 punishes possessing or distributing a device or program prepared to reveal passwords or access codes or to break protection measures with at least one year's imprisonment and a fine of 1,000 to 10,000 dinars.

Article 2 of Law No. 9 of 1968 lists the categories of work an author is protected in, covering written, artistic, dramatic, musical, photographic, and similar works, but article 4 excludes a collection comprising various works, such as an anthology, from protection as such, without affecting the copyright each contained work carries on its own; Libya has no separate sui generis database or compilation right.

Article 4 also excludes a collection of official documents, such as statutes, decrees, and judgments, from protection unless it is itself characterized by innovation or an original arrangement. The law predates networked computing and states no text-and-data-mining exception and no machine-readable reservation mechanism.

Article 13 of Law No. 9 of 1968 permits analyses and short quotations from a published work where intended for criticism, discussion, education, or information, provided the author's name, if known, and the source are given.

Article 14 lets a newspaper or periodical publish a quotation, a summary, or a short statement from another's work or novel without the author's permission, and copy an article on political, economic, scientific, or religious discussion of public interest at a given time, as long as the source publication has not indicated that copying is strictly prohibited, but bars copying a scientific, literary, or artistic article, serial, or short story wholesale without permission; the source and author's name must always be given.

The same article states that the law's protection does not extend to daily events and other occurrences having the nature of ordinary news. Article 15 lets a newspaper or broadcaster publish or broadcast, as news and without the author's permission, a speech, lecture, or talk delivered at an open meeting of a legislative or administrative body or at a scientific, literary, political, social, or religious meeting addressed to the public.

Article 17 permits copying a short quotation, or a limited extract of a graphic, sculptural, or photographic work, in a school, literature, history, science, or art book, with the source and author's name always given.