North Macedonia

Summary

North Macedonia presents low crawling risk for public pages. The Criminal Code (OG No. 37/1996, extensively amended; Budapest Convention ratified OG No. 41/2004) criminalises unauthorised intrusion into computer systems; following the Budapest model, a security mechanism must be bypassed for criminal liability, so crawling publicly accessible pages is safe from criminal exposure. The Law on Copyright and Related Rights (OG No. 47/2010 et seq.) includes an EU-aligned database maker right as part of related rights, directly transposing Directive 96/9/EC and protecting substantial investment in database creation/maintenance. No TDM exception exists; the Law on Copyright has not been amended to transpose EU DSM Directive TDM provisions. The Law on Personal Data Protection (OG No. 42/2020, 294/2021) is closely modelled on GDPR — it provides data subjects with access, erasure, portability, and objection rights, and the Directorate for Personal Data Protection is the supervisory authority. No AI-specific law exists. North Macedonia is an EU accession candidate; its IP and data protection frameworks approximate EU law but EU regulations do not directly bind it.