The Senate finally approved the draft amendments to the Copyright Act (“Draft Amendment”), which subsequently became the Copyright Act (No. 5) B.E. 2565 (2022) (“Copyright Act”). The Copyright Act was published in the Government Gazette on 24 February 2022 and will officially come into force 180 days after publication, which in this case would be 23 August 2022.

Similar to the Draft Amendment, the main provisions of the Copyright Act remain the same, which include:

• Four classifications of service providers (intermediary, caching, hosting, and information location tools) and the requirements to be exempted from copyright infringement
• “Notice and take down” for copyright infringement occurring on a system or computer network for hosting, and information location tools
• Requirements for issuance of a copyright infringement notice to the service providers and requirements for counter-claims against the said notice.

It is envisaged that the new Copyright Act will be seen as an attempt to keep pace with changes in technology, however, it remains to be seen how the Copyright Act could cope with the current situation.