Criminal Legal Regulation Of Web Crawlers

As one of the indispensable information technologies in the development of the Internet,web crawlers are the most common automated technology for data access and acquisition,and are widely used in the field of search engines.Due to the serious phenomenon of pocketing and imperfect legal system for the current crime of web crawler behavior,the crawler technology has deviated from the neutral technical definition and then undergone "changes".Malicious web crawler behavior is becoming increasingly rampant,often trespassing the legal bottom line,and the legal risk of web crawler behavior in judicial practice has continued to expand from civil tort and unfair competition to the field of criminal offenses.How to reasonably regulate the crawler technology that has arisen due to the network and avoid the criminal risks brought about by the "alienation" of the network crawler behavior,which not only effectively protects the interests of data subjects,but also escorts the efficient circulation and utilization of network technology,has become an important issue that needs to be solved urgently in China’s criminal law.A web crawler is a script or program that automatically and batches extract data from a web page according to set rules.The crawling of data needs to be examined from two dimensions: objective access,whether the data is "unauthorized" or "beyond authorization",and whether there is subjective access to and intentional crawling of data.In judicial practice,the risk of crimes involving malicious web crawlers shows an expansion trend,and the boundaries of criminal illegality of different types of web crawler acts should be strictly identified to rationally de-pocket.From the analysis of the application of crimes,when the data accessed or captured has special attributes,the acquisition behavior may constitute the corresponding crime of infringing citizens’ personal information,copyright infringement,and infringement of trade secrets according to the specific behavior;when the acquisition behavior meets the special circumstances,the data acquisition may constitute the crime of illegal intrusion into the computer information system and the crime of destroying the computer information system.After excluding the above special circumstances,the crime of illegally obtaining computer information system data regulates the general ordinary data acquisition behavior,which is the criminal law’s regulation of data acquisition behavior.This paper focuses on the crime of illegally obtaining computer information system data,which is widely used in practice,and focuses on the constituent elements of this crime,and specifically focuses on the two means and purposes of "intrusion" and "acquisition" and the specific content of "serious circumstances".On the basis of clarifying the boundaries of criminal illegality of web crawler behavior,we should adhere to the principle of modesty in criminal law,so as to effectively protect the interests of data subjects and escort the development of network technology and business innovation.