Law / Venezuela

Venezuela

7 of 8 named instruments researched to a stage, across five of the six areas of law we track: 6 in force and 1 proposed. As of 5 September 2026.

  1. AI law 1
  2. Privacy law 2
  3. Scraping law 2
  4. Cybersecurity law none researched
  5. Age gating law 1
  6. News aggregation law 1

in forceenacted but not yet in forceproposedrepealed, withdrawn or blocked

Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.

AI law1 instrument, 1 proposed

Research summary (70 words)

Venezuela has not enacted an AI-specific statute. A National Artificial Intelligence Bill, unanimously approved on first reading by the National Assembly in November 2024, would create a National Artificial Intelligence Agency and comprises 57 articles across four chapters aimed at supervision and control of AI use and at promoting education and development of the technology; it has not passed a second reading or been enacted as of the date below.

AI governance

Proyecto de Ley de Inteligencia Artificial (National Artificial Intelligence Bill)

Comunicado de Cendit, Ministerio del Poder Popular para Ciencia y Tecnología, 20 de noviembre de 2024Official communication from Cendit (Centro Nacional de Desarrollo e Investigación en Tecnologías Libres)

Proposed: draft date not recorded. Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

The bill, presented by deputy José Villaroel of the Permanent Commission for Education, Health, Science, Technology and Innovation, comprises 57 articles across four chapters aimed at the supervision and control of the use of artificial intelligence and at promoting education and development of the technology under ethical values. It would create a National Artificial Intelligence Agency as a regulatory body intended to promote transparency in the use of the technology.

The National Assembly approved it unanimously on first reading, as reported in a government communication dated 20 November 2024, and the Assembly's president instructed the Science and Technology Commission to consult the scientific community, telecommunications sector, experts, and the public before a further vote; no second-reading vote or enactment is recorded as of the date below. This proposal has not been enacted and does not currently bind any AI system.

What it requires

Privacy law2 instruments, 2 in force

Research summary (130 words)

Venezuela has no comprehensive data-protection statute or dedicated data-protection supervisory authority.

Article 28 of the 1999 Constitution gives every person a habeas data right to access, know the use and purpose of, and seek the update, correction, or destruction of personal data or information about themselves or their property held in official or private registries, and Article 60 protects honor, private life, intimacy, one's own image, confidentiality, and reputation, directing that the law limit the use of informatics to guarantee them.

Below the constitutional level, Chapter III of the Ley Especial contra los Delitos Informáticos criminalizes appropriating, using, or disclosing another person's personal data or private communications held in a computer system without consent, which functions as Venezuela's principal statutory privacy protection in the absence of a civil data-protection regime.

Data subject rights

Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, Arts. 28 and 60 (habeas data and right to privacy)

Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, Gaceta Oficial Extraordinaria N° 36.860, 30 de diciembre de 1999, arts. 28 y 60Official text of the 1999 Constitution as reproduced by the Organization of American States

In force since 30 December 1999. Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Article 28 gives every person the right to access information and data concerning themselves or their property held in official or private registries, to know the use made of it and its purpose, and to ask the competent court for its update, correction, or destruction where it is erroneous or illegitimately affects their rights; it also protects the confidentiality of journalistic and other professional sources the law names.

Article 60 protects every person's honor, private life, intimacy, own image, confidentiality, and reputation, and directs that the law limit the use of informatics to guarantee the honor and personal and family intimacy of citizens and the full exercise of their rights.

What it requires

Enforcement supervision

Ley Especial contra los Delitos Informáticos, privacy of personal data and communications (Arts. 20-22)

LECDI, Gaceta Oficial N° 37.313, 30/10/2001, arts. 20-22Text of the Ley Especial contra los Delitos Informáticos reproduced by the Organization of American States

In force since 29 November 2001. Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Article 20 punishes anyone who intentionally appropriates, uses, modifies, or deletes, by any means and without the owner's consent, another person's personal data or information, or data in which they have a legitimate interest, held in a computer or system that uses information technology, with the penalty increased by a third to a half if the conduct causes harm to the data's holder or a third party.

Article 21 separately punishes accessing, capturing, intercepting, interfering with, reproducing, modifying, diverting, or deleting another person's data message or transmission or communication signal through the use of information technology.

Article 22 punishes revealing, disseminating, or transferring, in whole or in part, the facts discovered, images, audio, or data or information obtained through the conduct articles 20 and 21 describe, with a heavier penalty where the disclosure was for profit or caused harm to another. No dedicated data-protection supervisory authority exists; these criminal offences are the operative statutory sanction for a privacy violation in the absence of a civil regime.

What it requires

Scraping law2 instruments, 2 in force

Research summary (231 words)

Venezuela has no scraping-specific statute, so general law governs each dimension separately.

The Ley Especial contra los Delitos Informáticos criminalizes unauthorized access to, and sabotage or interception of, a computer system, with an aggravated penalty where the system holds personal or patrimonial data or serves a public function, but the offence requires accessing the system without or in excess of authorization, so the text does not by itself resolve whether reading a public, unauthenticated page without defeating any access control falls within it, and no reported Venezuelan decision construing the point has been located.

No Venezuelan court has ruled on the enforceability of a browsewrap or clickwrap terms-of-service against a scraper.

The Ley sobre el Derecho de Autor protects an anthology, compilation, or database as an original work only through the selection or arrangement of its contents, conferring no separate sui generis database right over the underlying data, and it lets an already-published work be quoted, reported by the press as current-events information, or reproduced as mere news of the day or plain facts, without extending that limitation to systematic, wholesale reproduction; the statute predates the concept of a machine-readable text-and-data-mining opt-out and contains no such mechanism.

No Venezuelan statute or reported case establishes a scraping-specific unfair-competition, misappropriation, or trespass doctrine distinct from the computer-misuse offences above, and none assigns legal weight to a robots.txt directive or imposes an AI-training-specific rule.

Computer misuse

Ley Especial contra los Delitos Informáticos, unauthorized access and sabotage of systems (Arts. 6-11)

LECDI, Gaceta Oficial N° 37.313, 30/10/2001, arts. 6-11Text of the Ley Especial contra los Delitos Informáticos reproduced by the Organization of American States

In force since 29 November 2001. Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Article 6 punishes any person who, without due authorization or exceeding the authorization obtained, accesses, intercepts, interferes with, or uses a system that uses information technology. Article 7 punishes intentionally destroying, damaging, modifying, or otherwise altering or disabling such a system or its data, with a heavier penalty where a virus or similar program is used, and article 8 reduces the penalty by half to two-thirds where the same conduct is merely negligent.

Article 9 raises every penalty in this chapter by a third to a half where the system affected is protected by security measures, serves a public function, or holds personal or patrimonial data of a natural or legal person.

Article 10 punishes importing, manufacturing, distributing, selling, or using equipment or programs meant to defeat a system's security, or offering services to that end, and article 11 separately punishes improperly obtaining, revealing, or disseminating data or information held in a system, with the penalty raised where done for profit or where it endangers state security or an affected institution's reliability.

The offences in articles 6 through 11 all require accessing, intercepting, or otherwise acting on a system without or in excess of authorization; no provision, and no reported Venezuelan decision, addresses whether reading a public, unauthenticated page falls within that requirement.

What it requires

Database right

Ley sobre el Derecho de Autor, compilations and databases (Art. 3)

Ley sobre el Derecho de Autor, 14/08/1993, art. 3Text of the Ley sobre el Derecho de Autor as published by the Servicio Autónomo de la Propiedad Intelectual (SAPI)

In force. Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Article 3 protects an anthology or compilation of diverse works, and a database, as a work distinct from an original work, where the selection or arrangement of its contents constitutes a personal creation, so protection attaches to the compiler's selection or arrangement rather than to the underlying data itself; the law confers no separate sui generis right over a database's contents.

Article 4 excludes the text of laws, decrees, official regulations, public treaties, judicial decisions, and other official acts from protection. Article 40(8) treats public access to a computer database by telecommunication as an act of public communication requiring the rightholder's authorization where the database incorporates or constitutes protected works.

Article 44(3) permits reproducing, for non-profit teaching or examinations at educational institutions, articles, brief extracts of works, or lawfully published short works, provided the use conforms to fair practice; the statute contains no text-and-data-mining exception or machine-readable opt-out mechanism.

What it requires

Age gating law1 instrument, 1 in force

Research summary (155 words)

Venezuela has no social-media minor-access restriction, app-store age-verification requirement, or age-appropriate design code recorded here. The Ley Especial contra los Delitos Informáticos criminalizes exhibiting, disseminating, transmitting, or selling pornographic or adults-only material through an information-technology medium without first giving warnings that let the user restrict access by children and adolescents, which is the located adult-content age-gating duty.

The same statute's separate offence for using a child's person or image for exhibitionist or pornographic ends criminalizes child sexual abuse material but does not itself impose an age-verification or access-restriction duty on a publisher of adult content generally, so no instrument is recorded for it here.

The Ley de Responsabilidad Social en Radio, Televisión y Medios Electrónicos, as reformed to reach electronic media, sets content-classification and scheduling rules for broadcast and electronic media, but the operative text of its current consolidated form is not reproduced in the copies available here, so no instrument is recorded for it.

Adult content age verification (AV)

Ley Especial contra los Delitos Informáticos, adult-content access-warning duty (Art. 23)

LECDI, Gaceta Oficial N° 37.313, 30/10/2001, art. 23Text of the Ley Especial contra los Delitos Informáticos reproduced by the Organization of American States

In force since 29 November 2001. Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Article 23 punishes anyone who, through any medium involving the use of information technology, exhibits, disseminates, transmits, or sells pornographic material or material reserved to adults, without first giving the due warnings for the user to restrict access by children and adolescents. The duty is a warning requirement rather than a specified verification or age-gating mechanism, and the statute does not describe what form the warning must take.

Note and primary source

News aggregation law1 instrument, 1 in force

Research summary (228 words)

Venezuela has no press-publisher neighbouring right, no mandatory platform-to-publisher bargaining code, no recognized hot-news misappropriation doctrine distinct from ordinary copyright law, and no located statute or case law addressing hyperlinking or framing liability specifically; each of those dimensions is a sourced absence rather than an unresolved question.

The Ley sobre el Derecho de Autor lets any person, once a work is lawfully disclosed and its author and source are clearly credited, quote determinate parts of an already-disclosed work (art. 46(2)), broadcast in full, by press or radio, speeches given at public assemblies or before public authorities as current-events information (art. 47(1)), and disseminate by press or broadcast current articles on economic, social, artistic, political, or religious matters published in periodicals or magazines, unless reproduction was expressly reserved, even in the form of a press review (art. 47(2)); it separately declares lawful the reproduction of the news of the day or of miscellaneous facts having the character of mere press information, so long as they do not constitute works of ingenuity by their form, without prejudice to unfair-competition principles (art. 48).

None of these exceptions is capped at a headline-length or short-extract threshold, and no Venezuelan decision testing them against a systematic content aggregator, as opposed to a traditional press review, has been located. The statute predates the concept of a machine-readable text-and-data-mining opt-out and contains no such mechanism.

Snippet reproduction

Ley sobre el Derecho de Autor, quotation, press-review, and news-of-the-day exceptions (Arts. 46-49)

Ley sobre el Derecho de Autor, 14/08/1993, arts. 46-49Text of the Ley sobre el Derecho de Autor as published by the Servicio Autónomo de la Propiedad Intelectual (SAPI)

In force. Binds public and private bodies.

What this law does

Article 46(2) permits quoting determinate parts of a work already disclosed, within an original work in which the author has used language as a medium of expression, provided the author's name and the source are clearly indicated. Article 47(1) permits, on the same attribution condition, the full broadcast by press or radio of speeches given at public assemblies, meetings, ceremonies, or public debates before national, state, or municipal authorities.

Article 47(2) separately permits the dissemination by press or broadcast of current articles on economic, social, artistic, political, or religious matters published in periodicals or magazines, unless their reproduction was expressly reserved, including in the form of a press review.

Article 48 separately declares lawful the reproduction of the news of the day or of miscellaneous facts having the character of mere press information, published by the press or by broadcasting, so long as they do not constitute works of ingenuity by their form, without prejudice to the principles governing unfair competition.

Article 49 permits, for reporting on current events by broadcasting or cinematography, broadcasting or recording brief fragments of works that become perceptible during the events the report concerns.

None of these exceptions is capped at a headline-length or short-extract threshold, and none is confined to a defined press industry; whether any reaches a systematic aggregator's reproduction of headlines and snippets, as against a traditional press review or a broadcaster's current-events report, has not been tested in a located Venezuelan decision.

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

Note and primary source

This page covers the instruments LexLint has researched to a stage. Instruments named in the corpus but not yet researched are counted in the head and are not listed here. Every entry carries its own primary source on its note page. This is a research index, not legal advice.