Legal Standards In Korea For Permissible Web Crawling

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.