Amendment to copyright law in Poland- new rules of fair use. Webscraping, text and data mining. Text and data mining as an activity, not a mining tool (technique)
Publication date: January 09, 2026
On 20 September 2024, an amendment to the Act of February 4, 1994 on Copyright and Related Rights entered into force. The purpose of the amendment was to implement two directives of the European Parliament and of the Council (EU) of April 17, 2019, into the Polish legal system: 1) Directive 2019/789 laying down rules on the exercise of copyright and related rights applicable to certain online transmissions by broadcasting organisations and retransmissions of television and radio programmes, and amending Council Directive 93/83/EEC (the so-called SATCAB II Directive) and Directive 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market and amending Directives 96/9/EC and 2001/29/EC (the so-called Digital Single Market Directive, or DSM). The deadline for implementing both directives expired long ago, in June 2021. This delay was in particular the result of waiting for the European Commission’s guidelines on the application of Article 17 of the DSM Directive, as well as the controversy related primarily to this provision and the emerging allegations against the directive that it reduces the scope of freedom of speech on the Internet.
