Discussing Data Ownership Disputes and Data Protection from Data Crawling Practices

Abstract

As a new kind of oil, data is an important resource that enterprises compete for in the digital economy, and mastering data means mastering the market. However, the game of endless crawlers and anti-crawler technologies reflects the conflicting relationship between data crawling and resource protection. In China's judicial practice, the general provisions of Article 2 of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law are usually applied to the regulation of data crawling. The application of this provision should find a balance between the protection of data resources and the restriction of data monopoly, so as to resolve the conflict between data grabbers and data collectors, data sharing and the protection of data rights and interests; it also needs to be discussed in terms of the competitive relationship, the legitimacy of the act and whether the principle of necessary facilities can be defended. As the cornerstone of the legitimacy of data capture, we should discuss how to protect data and maximize its value by building a system of data rights attribution, so as to alleviate the inherent tension between incentivizing data production and reducing the risk of individual privacy infringement, form a reasonable division between individual users, platform enterprises and the government and the state regarding the content and boundaries of data ownership, and build a "common ground" between the public, online platforms and the government and the state in data governance. This will lead to the establishment of a "co-construction, co-management and sharing" pattern of government national data governance.