Legal Standards In Korea For Permissible Web Crawling

• Law Firm: DR & AJU LLC
• Subject Matter: Intellectual Property, Media, Telecoms, IT, Entertainment, Criminal Law, IT and Internet, Copyright, White Collar Crime, Anti-Corruption & Fraud
• Author: Ms Ho-Jeong JEONG
• Published date: 02 January 2023

1. Introduction

The increasing datafication of our lives has spotlighted data as a key resource of our generation. Following the elevation of data value, "web crawling (hereinafter referred to as "crawling"), a technique used to collect data from the web, has quickly gained relevance. Crawling is a tool that automatically collects and indexes websites, hyperlinks, data, and information resources that are distributed and stored in many computers.

Although crawling is currently applied broadly in many fields, there are still conflicting social views on this topic. Even Korean law does not clearly stipulate the standards for lawful crawling. Companies have been complaining of difficulties arising from the uncertainty, and critics have pointed to this phenomenon as a hindrance to developing new industries that utilize data.

By reviewing past Court decisions, this article will analyze the key issues and legal opinions (and defenses) on crawling to fathom the possibility of establishing a cohesive standard for lawful crawling.

2. Legal Opinions in Favor of Restricting Crawling

1. Copyright and Database Producers Rights Infringement Claims and Copyright Restrictions

1. Overview of Copyright Regulations

Under the Copyright Act, the copyright owner has limited exclusive rights on the work of the copyright, the rights to reproduce, distribute, publicly perform, exhibit, and produce a derivative of the original work (Article 16). Database Producers, who produce databases that are not of creative nature, also have rights similar to copyrights.

Likewise, the Copyright Act stipulates limitations on the Author's Economic Rights (Articles 23 through 38), which is applied mutatis mutandis to database usage in the Limitations on the Rights of Database Producers (Article 94), which limits the use of copyright regardless of the copyright holder's will. This law corresponds to the "Fair Use" doctrine in U.S. law.

2. Court Decision on Whether Crawling Infringes Copyright and Database Producers' Rights

When crawling public data from several websites, there are occasions when data such as copyrighted material or databases are copied.

In a civil suit where Saramin (Defendant) crawled and collected recruitment information posted on the website of JobKorea (Plaintiff), the Supreme Court affirmed the unlawfulness of the Defendant's actions by acknowledging the Plaintiff's infringement of data-producer rights (such as the right of reproduction) on the grounds that the Defendant copied recruitment information from the Plaintiff's database methodically and repetitively without paying any form of compensation, and that it had taken the Plaintiff several years to accumulate such data (Seoul High Court Decision 2016Na2019365, Decided on April 6, 2017).

On the other hand, in another crawling case where GC Company (Defendant) collected information on accommodation services from Yanolja (Plaintiff), the Supreme Court ruled that the Defendant did not cause unfair damage to the Plaintiff's business interest on the grounds that the Defendant collected the data of accommodation services of only 3 to 8 items out of a total of 50 items, and that the information of accommodation services was already well known and did not require a considerable cost or effort to acquire.

2. Claims of the Violation of the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection Etc.

1. Overview of the Information and Communications...