Internet crawler fined 100 million? Lawsnote founder: Taiwan's startups are more pathetic than fraud groups

The Taiwanese legal tech startup "Qifa Company" ( Lawsnote ) has been sued by the legal database operator "Law Source Information" for using web crawlers ( Web Crawler ) to scrape content from the legal database. They are accused of illegally extracting data for profit, allegedly infringing copyright and obstructing computer use. Recently, the New Taipei District Court re-sentenced the two founders, Guo Rongyan and Xie Fuya, to pay 100 million New Taiwan Dollars and sentenced them to 4 years and 2 years of imprisonment, respectively. In response, Guo Rongyan also posted on Facebook saying, "Establishing a startup in Taiwan is more pathetic than a scam group."

The court ruled that web scraping constitutes a crime, with legal sources owning copyright regulations.

According to a press release from the New Taipei District Court, the court determined that Qifa Company used web crawlers to capture content from legal source websites, including "Legislative History" and "Regulatory Attachments," for use on their own platform, constituting copyright infringement and computer usage interference. The two founders of Qifa were each sentenced to 4 years and 2 years of imprisonment, respectively, and must also compensate the legal source with NT$154.5 million.

According to reports, the ruling has caused a shock in the industry. Assuming that it is determined based on this:

All companies that use web crawlers to collect data may violate the "Computer Tampering Act."

The publicly available regulatory content, history, attachments, and other data from the government, if processed through legal sources, may become "copyright assets" of the legal sources.

The legal source has long been contracted by the government for bidding, monopolizing the maintenance and operation of the regulatory system.

After the verdict was announced, Guo Rongyan also stated on Facebook that the plaintiff in this case, "Fayuan Information Company," is a well-established player that has long been contracted to provide government legal document inquiry systems.

From 2018 to 2022, over a hundred government contracts were obtained, covering operational projects such as the national legal database, the Financial Supervisory Commission's website, and the Judicial Yuan's ruling inquiry system. This has led many government units to proactively submit copies to the legal source when there are regulatory changes or official document processes. Guo Rongyan further stated that before 2015, the legal source almost monopolized Taiwan's legal inquiry services.

The image shows the "Legal Source Construction" screen on the Judicial Yuan and Financial Supervisory Commission websites. Can public legal data also have copyright?

Guo Rongyan cited Article 9 of the Copyright Law, stating that constitutional documents, laws, official documents, etc., cannot be subjects of copyright, nor do they include news content that translates, edits, or communicates facts from the public sector.

However, the court determined that the "Regulatory Evolution" and "Content of the Bill" on the legal source website possess editorial copyright and are thus protected. He questioned:

"The legal source itself admits that its historical content is written according to a unified standard format, so there is fundamentally no creativity. How could it constitute copyright?"

What makes it even more puzzling is that if the regulations from the legal source have copyright, does that mean the government's "National Regulations Database" must also obtain authorization from the legal source? Furthermore, lawyer Yang Zhewei, appointed by Qifa Company, pointed out that the construction of the Qifa database comes from hundreds of government websites and public data platforms, and the legal source is only one of the sources. He emphasized:

"If all this data is considered as proprietary legal sources, other companies will be unable to develop their own regulatory services, which would be a heavy blow to the entire legal information industry."

Guo Rongyan still reiterates his innocence, lamenting that the punishment is harsher than fraud.

Regarding the court's heavy sentence, Guo Rongyan expressed his astonishment.

"I don't believe I have done anything illegal. Web scraping is a commonly used tool on the internet, utilized by everything from Google to price comparison websites."

He emphasized that throughout the entrepreneurial process, he constantly thought about how to use technology to help popularize legal services, but unexpectedly encountered such punishment. Lawyer Yang also stated that the maximum penalty stipulated in the copyright law is 5 years, yet Guo Rongyan was sentenced to 4 years, which is close to the limit and even exceeds the verdicts for selling counterfeit goods and fraud cases, making it hard to accept, and he will continue to appeal.

Is web scraping illegal? The case of Seven Laws ignites community debate.

After the verdict was announced, many netizens began discussing whether "crawling is illegal." Some netizens believe that the crawling technology used by Qifa involves scraping data behind paywalls (Paywall) and even breaking website protection mechanisms (Captcha), which is a boundary that AI startups or Google would not cross.

However, some people believe that many AI companies have actually been operating in this gray area for a long time, such as Meta, OpenAI, Midjourney, etc. They may just have stronger legal teams to bear the risks. The key point is not about crossing the line, but whether one has the ability to bear the consequences after crossing it.

However, some netizens have stated that as long as web crawlers bypass paywalls or verification mechanisms, it is equivalent to illegally obtaining data, which constitutes a technical intrusion. They cited the case of The New York Times suing OpenAI to explain that similar cases have also occurred internationally.

Some netizens also mentioned that if the content that can originally be seen on the webpage is just copied and pasted using a program, whether it counts as "unlawfully obtained" is still up for debate. However, if the website has clearly stated "no crawling" and one still insists on scraping, it's hard to say it's a misunderstanding. This case is still in the judicial process, and the scope of data and legal applicability will await the final judgment to be revealed. However, from the comments in the community, it can be seen that there is still significant divergence and discussion space regarding the boundaries of crawling technology and data authorization.

This article discusses a penalty of 100 million for web crawlers? Lawsnote founder: Taiwan's startups are more pathetic than scam groups. First appeared in Chain News ABMedia.