Section 50 Copyright Act
Section 50 Copyright Act 2022 is about Circumvention of technological protection measures. It is under Part VI (Anti-Piracy and other Measures) of the Act.
(1) Subject to the provisions of Part II of this Act, no person shall knowingly circumvent a technological protection measure that effectively protects access to a work protected under this Act.
(2) No person shall manufacture, import, sell, offer for sale, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, or part, that —
(a) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological protection measure that effectively protects a work under this Act ;
(b) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent protection afforded by a technological measure that protects a work under this Act ; and
(c) is sold or distributed for use in circumventing a technological protection measure that effectively protects a work under this Act.
(3) In this section —
(a) “technological protection measure” means a technology, device, product or component incorporated into the work which is designed to effectively prevent or inhibit the infringement of any copyright or related right ;
(b) “circumvent a technological protection measure” as used means avoiding, bypassing, removing, deactivating, decrypting or otherwise impairing a technological protection measure ; and
(c) a technological protection measure effectively protects a work under this Act, if the measure in the ordinary course of its operation, controls access to a work protected under this Act or prevents or restrict acts in respect of the works, which are not authorised by the authors concerned or permitted by law, provided that this section does not extend to measures, which in the normal cause of operation, only controls access to a work for non-infringing purposes.
(4) A non-profit library, archive or educational institution, which gains access to a commercially exploited copyright work in order to make a good faith determination only, of whether to acquire a copy of the work for the purpose of engaging in conduct permitted under this Act shall not be in violation
of the provisions of this section, provided that a copy of a work to which access has been gained under this subsection may not be —
(a) retained longer than necessary to make the good faith determination ; and
(b) used for any other purpose.
(5) The exemption under subsection (4) shall only apply with respect to a work, when an identical copy of that work is not available in another form.
(6) This section does not prohibit any lawfully authorised investigation, protection, information security, intelligence activity, or computer security measures.
(7) The provisions of this section shall not affect the exercise of any exception provided in this Act as it relates to the work in respect of which the technological protection measure is applied.
(8) Notwithstanding the provisions of this section, a person who has lawfully obtained the right to use a copy of a computer programme, may —
(a) circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a particular portion of that programme for the sole purpose of identifying and analysing those elements of the programme ;
(b) be necessary to achieve interoperability of an independently created computer programme with other programmes ; or
(c) have not previously been readily available to the person engaging in the circumvention, to the extent that any acts of identification and analysis do not constitute infringement under this Act.
(9) For the purpose of subsection (9), the term “interoperability” means the ability of computer programmes to exchange information and mutually use the information, which has been exchanged.
