What Türkiye's Digital Copyright Bill Brings
The Digital Copyright Bill published on 12 December 2025: the duties it places on intermediary service providers and the mechanisms it sets up to enforce them.
By · Aysu K. Ergin
On 12 December 2025 the Digital Copyright Bill (the “Bill”) was published. In substance, the Bill’s purpose is to secure copyright protection in digital environments and to place protection against copyright infringements occurring in those environments within a defined framework. Alongside rules on liability and sanctions, particularly for “intermediary service providers”, the Bill sets up a number of mechanisms.
The Definition of “Intermediary Service Provider”
- The first thing that stands out is the expression “intermediary service provider” introduced in the Definitions section together with the Bill’s purpose. The scope of the expression “intermediary service provider”, as settled in existing legislation, appears to have been widened:
In terms of its purpose, the Bill is intended to secure protection for any work published in digital environments and subject to copyright. In drawing up this protection, a balance has been sought in the conflict between freedom of expression and copyright, and weight has been given to a criterion of objectivity under which small and independent publishers are to be protected. However, while using the expression “intermediary service provider” for those responsible in the digital environment, the Bill introduces the following definition:
“Intermediary service provider: any digital platform or service that enables users to upload, store or share content on the internet.”
In its reasoning on Article 5, which governs the liability of intermediary service providers, the Bill states:
“Owing to the spread of unauthorised use of news content in digital environments…”
What strikes me is that although the Bill uses the expression “intermediary service provider”, it introduces a definition, and a copyright-protection purpose, under which “hosting providers” may also fall within that expression. Indeed, when the definitions already settled in law are examined:
Overlap With Existing Statutory Definitions
Under Law no. 6563 on the Regulation of Electronic Commerce:
“Intermediary service provider: natural and legal persons who provide the electronic commerce environment for the economic and commercial activities of others.”
Under Law no. 5651 on the Regulation of Publications on the Internet and Combating Crimes Committed by Means of Such Publications:
**“**Hosting provider: natural and legal persons who provide or operate the systems hosting services and content.”
A duplicated term appearing in the Bill with a widened definition raises the concern that, once this Bill enters into force, it will also cover hosting providers.
The obligations set out item by item in the Bill are introduced specifically for “intermediary service providers” whose daily average unique users exceed 250,000, or whose annual gross revenue exceeds a threshold set by the Board, according to a procedure determined by the Copyright Monitoring Board. “Intermediary service providers” falling below those criteria will be subject to notification obligations and to an obligation to establish a content-removal procedure.
Protective Mechanisms: ACRS, the Registration System and the Arbitration Commission
- On another front, protective mechanisms such as the ACRS and the national registration system are notable.
ACRS: an obligation has been introduced to operate an Automatic Content Recognition System (Otomatik İçerik Tanıma Sistemi, “ACRS”) — software and algorithms to be used in detecting copyright infringements in digital content. Accordingly, “intermediary service providers” are under an obligation to establish an effective ACRS. Through the ACRS, content containing a copyright infringement will be detectable by algorithm. “Intermediary service providers” are also placed under an obligation to report transparently to the Copyright Monitoring Board on the effectiveness of their ACRS.
National Digital Works Registration System: at present, works subject to copyright are searched through the copyright works database of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The Bill provides for a National Digital Works Registration System (Ulusal Dijital Eser Kayıt Sistemi, “UDES”). That system is an accessible database in which works and related rights are registered in digital form, and it carries weight as evidence. Registration procedures through the system will be detailed by regulations to be issued once the Bill enters into force. The body responsible for establishing and supervising the system is the Copyright Monitoring Board.
Copyright Dispute Arbitration Commission: the Bill provides for an independent, five-member Copyright Dispute Arbitration Commission, whose members are specialists in copyright law, information technology law and digital technology. Where a dispute is referred to this Commission, a technical examination is carried out within fifteen days at the latest. The Commission’s decisions will be binding on the parties and will be taken into account as a matter of priority by the courts.
Tensions That Could Upset the Balance of Rights
- Tensions that could upset the balance between competing rights in practice also come to mind:
(1) The assessment and prevention duties of a platform exposed to sanctions: Article 9 of the Bill sets out the sanctions provided for intermediary service providers that fail to meet their obligations. At the same time, when the obligations of intermediary service providers are examined:
Article 5(2)(b) introduces an obligation to “prevent content constituting copyright infringement from being uploaded to the platform before any notification is received…”
Article 5(2)(d) sets out an obligation to “assess copyright notifications swiftly and effectively and remove infringements found to be justified…”
Read together with the sanctions provided for intermediary service providers in the event of breach, the fact that intermediary service providers are also the platform assessing those first notifications and removing content, and their responsibility to prevent infringing content from being published even before any notification is received, may create difficulties for the balance of freedom of expression, along with the unjustified removal of content. Problems such as content being removed without justification on intermediary service provider platforms, in the name of preventing copyright infringement, are foreseeable. Creators whose content is removed without justification may face lost earnings during that period, even if it is only a suspension.
This is not confined to the Bill; it is a problem of balancing rights already encountered in digital intellectual property infringement generally.
(2) The Board’s ex officio review of infringement in AI-generated content: under Article 3(5) of the Bill, the Board will ex officio review authorship and copyright infringement in content produced by artificial intelligence, or reused by it. Questions of copyright infringement where artificial intelligence is involved in works are already an actively debated subject.
In a future order in which artificial intelligence is also recognised as a “person” or holds other rights, the present outcomes in practice and the Board decisions to be taken on authorship may become unsuitable, and settled practice may be difficult to achieve.
How the Board will proceed and what examination it will carry out when reviewing infringement in such works is an important question.
Another concern internationally, again not confined to the Bill, is the point of proof in establishing copyright infringement in content reused or produced by artificial intelligence. Specialists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have confirmed, in relation to software code, that through a particular analysis they can establish which inputs were used in works produced by artificial intelligence and detect copyright infringements. But detection in more complex works, and the provability of infringement, remain a worrying question.
On authenticity and traceability in the digital environment: Customization and the Fight Against Counterfeiting.
Conclusion
In conclusion, legislative work on protecting copyright in digital environments and on infringement is a necessary and important development. The uncertainties, practices and debates that a digitalising world brings to the balancing of rights persist in step with those developments, and make following current work in this field unavoidable.
On how infringement looks in practice: Superman & Chanel: Where Inspiration Ends and Infringement Begins.
You can access the Bill here: