The Research Into Criminal Regulation Of Web Crawling

At present,due to the accelerated expansion of cyberspace and the explosion of massive data,web crawlers,as an important neutral technology in the data collection link,have become a technical guarantee for global Internet companies to efficiently obtain business information.But since its inception,litigation caused by the use of crawler technology to obtain data have been continuous,and discussions about the legal boundaries of this behavior have also been controversial.Therefore,under the background of legal system of data governance in my country being improved and law enforcement is increasing,doing research on the internal logic of the process of data capture from suspected civil violations to suspected criminal crimes and the illegal nature of the behavior at the level of criminal law are an act of judging the situation.Based on it,this article focuses on the crime of illegally obtaining computer information system data,which is widely used in practice,and discusses the regulation of web crawling behavior by criminal law.Web crawlers are programs or scripts that automatically crawl Internet information according to certain rules.Demonstrating the illegality of using web crawlers to obtain data and the possible infringement of legal benefits of crawling behaviors mainly rely on the investigation of the following two aspects: One is the crawling logic contained in the crawler software code.The various statements,labels and data contained in the code of the crawler program or script usually reflect the function and crawl content of the crawler;the second is the comprehensive consideration of a series of dynamic behaviors of the perpetrator accessing other computer systems,obtaining data and using data when using the web crawler software,such as whether the actor is authorized before accessing the computer information system and whether the security measures set by the system are technically evaded or cracked.Taking the country’s first case of crawling into a criminal case as an entry point,it can be found by comparing the judgment ideas of China and the United States on the case of using crawler technology to obtain data,that the use of crawling technology to obtain data is increasingly necessary and reasonable.However,in judicial practice,the boundary between guilty and not guilty and the boundary between this crime and another crime of using web crawlers to obtain data is still unclear.Taking the crime of illegally acquiring computer data as an instance,to explore the criminal law and regulation path for the use of web crawlers to obtain data under the current cybercrime regulatory system needs to pay attention to two aspects.On the one hand,it is necessary to carry out interpretations of the elements of the crime in formal and substantive way to clarify the act conviction is reasonable.To be specific,it should focus on the precondition of "illegal",the act of "intruding" and "obtaining",the act of "obtaining" and the specific content of "serious circumstances".On the other hand,it is necessary to uphold the principle of Modesty,comprehensively consider individual behaviors in specific scenarios or industries,oppose and resist Robots agreements that unreasonably discriminate against web crawlers,and should not determine its effectiveness in the criminal law and decriminalize the behaviors of web crawlers in special fields or those that do not violate business ethics.At the same time,considering the legislative purpose and protection objects of the crime,prevent the crime from becoming a "pocket clause" and being improperly generalized.