On July 6th, the library of China Social Sciences University issued a document saying that recently, because its readers illegally used the database of Westlaw Classic Law Online, the school was informed by the database manufacturer that the school IP was permanently banned by the database manufacturer.
According to the circular, after a joint investigation by the network center and the library, it was confirmed that he was a doctoral student of 20 18 Law School. The student downloaded 842 documents in 137 minutes on June 6, 2022, and 1736 documents in 137 minutes on June 7, 2022.
The Library of China University of Social Sciences said that it is in continuous communication with data providers, and the time and method of resuming access are to be determined, and will be notified after confirmation.
On the afternoon of July 14, Interface Education called the library of China University of Social Sciences, and the teacher on duty said that it was not clear about the progress of this matter, and the teacher in charge of handling the incident had already taken a holiday.
At present, it has been educated in the search interface of WeChat platform in the library of China University of Social Sciences, but it has been unable to retrieve the announcement.
Westlaw Classic, a data provider involved in the case, is a one-stop legal information retrieval platform owned by Thomson Reuters, covering the written laws, case laws and international treaties of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, the European Union and other countries and regions, as well as legal periodicals, monographs, textbooks, dictionaries, encyclopedias and other information.
On the afternoon of July 14, Interface Education called Westlaw Classic, and a salesperson of the other party said that he was not aware of the recent incident between the database and China University of Social Sciences, but as far as he knew, the maximum number of downloads in a certain period of time should not be stipulated in the contract signed between the database and the university.
For the doctoral student to download 2578 papers in 4.5 hours, the school did not clearly explain how the student did it in the notification.
"The download speed is too fast. Downloading about ten papers a minute on average still puts pressure on the server. It is very likely that web crawler technology has been used. " Le Cheng, who is studying for a doctorate in a research university in the United States, told Interface Education.
On July 14, Li Tianhang, a senior partner of Ye Hui Law Firm, also said in an interview with Interface Education: "Crawler technology may be used, otherwise it will be difficult to achieve this amount."
Li Tianhang said: "The speed of reptile technology is amazing. Some crawlers can even visit millions of times per hour, which will directly lead to the paralysis of database servers, so some databases will ban the use of crawler tools. "
In the aforementioned notice, the Library of China University of Social Sciences also regulated readers' use of electronic resources, including "prohibiting the use of software tools to download electronic resources in batches, or downloading electronic resources continuously, centrally and in batches at abnormal reading speed, or downloading electronic periodicals as a whole."