Exemption of Infringement of Technology Protection Measures

Due to the exclusive right of copyright owner upon his/her own created work and the technology protection measures to support and prevent breach of such exclusivity in the digital era, one of the measures is the access control through technology to assist and tackle the issues of breaching of copyright such as setting code or password. If any act violates such measures either by such as hacking the code or decode the password, such act will be considered as breaching of access control measures where the violation act affects the measures to be ineffective. However, with or without the measures, the accessibility of the copyright work is always the issue for certain groups such as the disability or social goods accessibility includes educational purposes in which those should not be obstructed by this measure as it would put more burden on the same accessing to the works. Accordingly, the Ministry of Commerce has released its draft Announcement on Acts Exemption from Violation of Technology Protection Measures under Section 53/5(1) B.E. 2537 (1994)

The essence of this Announcement is to exclude “certain acts causing the technology protection measures to be ineffective” and those will not be considered as technology protection measure violation in which it will be focusing on literary, audiovisual and film works.

The acts under this Announcement which are not considered as violation of technology protection measures are as follows:

1. In case of acts causing ineffective of technology protection measures by the disabled persons or organizations endorsed by the Ministry of Commerce conducting for the benefits of disabled persons, the term of disability can be referred to that as specified in the Copyright Act B.E. 2537 (1994). If the disabled persons or organizations as mentioned above violate technology protection measures under certain acts such as those necessary for making such disable person living its life for audiovisual, film and/or literary works, those will not be considered as violating the technology protection measures. However, measures or systems to prevent others from accessing to the works are still required.

2. Exemptions of violation of technology protection measures in case of audiovisual and film works include the acts of students, researchers, teachers and educational institutes and acts of using some parts of works suitably for teaching or researching. It needs to have reasonable reasons that there is no any other way to arrange for the material for teaching other than violating of technology protection measures. However, measures or systems to prevent others from accessing to the works are still required.

3. Exemptions of violation of technology protection measure in case of audiovisual and film works also include the acts of librarians which are for keeping or copying of works for using in the library as the works got damage or unusable and that there is no way to arrange for such material from any source and that such material shall not be used outside the libraries.

In any way, the acts which are exempted from being violation of technology protection measures shall not be the acts for generating profits and the persons who conduct such acts shall receive the work or its copy legally.

This Announcement will be effective from 23 August 2022 onward.