The Copyright Act 2021, which came into force on November 21, 2021, replaced the prior Copyright Act (Cap 63). To take into account technological developments and balance the rights of creators and copyright users, the Copyright Act 2021 updates and strengthens the copyright regime in Singapore, including in the following areas:
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Granting authors of authorial works and performers of performances the right to be identified when their works are used in public.
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Introducing civil and criminal liability provisions relating to streaming content from unauthorized sources in devices such as set-top boxes or software applications.
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Strengthening the general “fair use exception.”
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Setting an expiry date for copyright protection of unpublished work.
- Introducing a new exception to allow copyright materials to be used for computational data analysis, eg, text, data mining and sentiment analysis.
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Introducing a new educational exception to permit schools and students of nonprofit educational institutions to use internet resources for educational purposes.
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Refining and introducing new exceptions to permit cultural heritage institutions to carry out activities relating to their work, eg, copying for administrative purposes, among others.
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Granting creators default ownership of all types of commissioned works, except for employee-created content where the employer is the default owner of content created by employee during the course of employment.
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Introducing new equitable remunerations rights when commercially published sound recordings are broadcasted or publicly performed.
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Refining existing exceptions for print-disabled users.
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Introducing new offenses relating to the sale of devices which facilitate access to copyright infringing works.
Any artistic work which is applied to a product and industrially produced does not fall under the protection of the Copyright Act 2021 and instead falls under the Registered Designs Act 2000.