text and data mining exception
In plain wordsA rule in many countries' copyright laws that lets people use computers to copy and analyze large amounts of text, images or data without asking permission — sometimes only for research, sometimes unless owners opt out.
A statutory exception to copyright, and in the EU to database rights, that allows the copies a computer must make when it analyzes large collections of works to derive information from them, such as trends or correlations. Its scope varies by jurisdiction. The EU's Digital Single Market Directive (2019) has two: Article 3, for research organizations and cultural heritage institutions doing scientific research, which rights holders cannot override; and Article 4, for anyone and any purpose given lawful access, unless the rights holder has reserved the right 'in an appropriate manner', which for material published online means a machine-readable signal such as robots.txtrobots.txt, n.: A small public file in which a website posts its rules for automated visitors, such as search-engine and AI crawlers, listing areas they are asked to stay out of. Obeying it is voluntary. or metadata. The EU AI ActEU AI Act, prop. n.: The European Union's law on artificial intelligence, the first broad AI law anywhere: it bans some uses, sets strict checks for risky ones and puts duties on the makers of the biggest AI models. requires providers of general-purpose AI modelsgeneral-purpose AI model, n.: The EU's legal name for the large, adaptable AI models behind chatbots and similar tools: models that can turn their hand to many different jobs and be built into many other products. to honor such reservations. Japan's Article 30-4 (2018) broadly permits uses not aimed at enjoying a work's expression unless they unreasonably prejudice the owner; Singapore (2021) allows computational data analysis with no opt-out; the UK permits only non-commercial research (2014). Courts are now testing whether model training, and memorization within a model, fall inside these exceptions.
The publisher added a machine-readable TDM opt-out so EU training crawlers would have to skip its archive.
Origin
Japan introduced an exception for computer 'information analysis' in 2009; the UK followed in 2014 after the Hargreaves Review, and the EU adopted its two-tier scheme in Directive (EU) 2019/790.
Usage note
Opt-out conventions remain fragmented. A UK government proposal of December 2024 to add a commercial exception with an opt-out met strong opposition from creative industries, and in GEMA v. OpenAI (Munich, November 2025) a German court held that the exception did not cover song lyrics memorized within a model.
Related
- fair use and AI trainingfair use and AI training, phr.: The unsettled US legal question of whether AI companies may copy books, articles, pictures and music to train their models without permission, under the rule that allows some unlicensed uses of copyrighted work.
- AI copyright litigationAI copyright litigation, n.: The many lawsuits in which authors, artists, news organizations, record labels and others accuse AI companies of copying their work without permission to build or run AI models.
- robots.txtrobots.txt, n.: A small public file in which a website posts its rules for automated visitors, such as search-engine and AI crawlers, listing areas they are asked to stay out of. Obeying it is voluntary.
- web scrapingweb scraping, n.: Using software to automatically copy information from websites — text, prices, images — in bulk, which is how much of the data used to train AI was gathered.
- data licensingdata licensing, n.: The legal permissions that say who may use a dataset or a body of content, for what purposes and on what terms — including whether it may be used to train AI.
- general-purpose AI modelgeneral-purpose AI model, n.: The EU's legal name for the large, adaptable AI models behind chatbots and similar tools: models that can turn their hand to many different jobs and be built into many other products.
- fair use and AI trainingfair use and AI training, phr.: The unsettled US legal question of whether AI companies may copy books, articles, pictures and music to train their models without permission, under the rule that allows some unlicensed uses of copyrighted work.
Defined in law or standards
Directive (EU) 2019/790, Arts. 3–4; EU AI Act (Reg. (EU) 2024/1689), Art. 53(1)(c); Japan Copyright Act, Art. 30-4
Mentioned in
AI copyright litigationAI copyright litigation, n.: The many lawsuits in which authors, artists, news organizations, record labels and others accuse AI companies of copying their work without permission to build or run AI models., fair use and AI trainingfair use and AI training, phr.: The unsettled US legal question of whether AI companies may copy books, articles, pictures and music to train their models without permission, under the rule that allows some unlicensed uses of copyrighted work., general-purpose AI modelgeneral-purpose AI model, n.: The EU's legal name for the large, adaptable AI models behind chatbots and similar tools: models that can turn their hand to many different jobs and be built into many other products., data licensingdata licensing, n.: The legal permissions that say who may use a dataset or a body of content, for what purposes and on what terms — including whether it may be used to train AI., data miningdata mining, n.: Searching large collections of data with computers to discover useful patterns, such as products often bought together or signs that a transaction may be fraudulent., General-Purpose AI Code of PracticeGeneral-Purpose AI Code of Practice, prop. n.: A voluntary rulebook, published by the EU in 2025, that makers of large AI models can sign to show they follow the EU AI Act's rules on transparency, copyright and safety., LAIONLAION, prop. n.: A mostly volunteer group, registered as a German nonprofit, that compiled free lists of billions of online pictures and their captions. Stable Diffusion and other image generators were trained on them., opt-outopt-out, n.: A way for creators, websites or individuals to say 'do not use my work or data to train AI' — instead of being asked for permission first, which would be opt-in., robots.txtrobots.txt, n.: A small public file in which a website posts its rules for automated visitors, such as search-engine and AI crawlers, listing areas they are asked to stay out of. Obeying it is voluntary., web scrapingweb scraping, n.: Using software to automatically copy information from websites — text, prices, images — in bulk, which is how much of the data used to train AI was gathered., AI Promotion ActAI Promotion Act, prop. n.: Japan's 2025 national AI law, which sets up a government AI headquarters and strategy to encourage AI development and use, relying on cooperation and guidance rather than fines.