New Zealand
AI behavior law: bot and agent disclosure, crawler and training-data rules, automated-agent transactions, and algorithmic decision-making.
Summary
New Zealand presents low-to-moderate risk. Crimes Act 1961 s.252 criminalises intentional access to a computer system without authorisation; the test turns on whether the scraper "knows" it is not authorised. Public pages carry implicit authorisation so s.252 is unlikely to apply unless ToS expressly prohibit access. Copyright Act 1994 uses fair dealing (no fair use, no TDM exception) — scraping copyrighted content for AI training has no clear safe harbour. No sui generis database right exists; compilations require originality. The Privacy Act 2020 (IPPs administered by OPC) applies when personal information is collected. A Privacy Amendment Act 2025 introduced IPP 3A (indirect-collection notice) effective May 2026. No AI-specific or TDM-specific legislation has been enacted; commentary notes the absence of a TDM exception as a gap but no formal MBIE consultation has concluded. Overall posture is permissive for public-page crawling of non-personal data; copyright and privacy caution where content or personal data is involved.
Automated-access legality
Carried forward from the crawler-law index. Governs whether automated clients may access public websites in this jurisdiction.
| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Authorization test | without permission |
| Public-page carve-out | unsettled |
| Terms-of-service browsewrap enforceable | notice dependent |
| Terms-of-service clickwrap enforceable | yes |
| Copyright exception model | fair dealing narrow |
| Text and data mining — commercial status | prohibited |
| Text and data mining — opt-out mechanism | none |
| robots.txt legal weight | non binding notice |
| AI training-specific law | none |
| Privacy regime | Privacy Act 2020 (IPPs) |
| Trespass to chattels | not recognized |
Last reviewed: 2026-05-23. Confidence: medium. Not legal advice.