Israel

Summary

Israel presents moderate risk for crawling, with a relatively permissive copyright posture but a significantly tightened privacy landscape. The Computers Law 5755-1995 (s.4) criminalises unlawful intrusion into computer material; the Israeli Supreme Court (Criminal Appeal 8464/14) has held that s.4 applies where access was "unlawful," meaning without the proper consent of the legal owner — the offence is not limited to overcoming a digital lock, though public pages carry implied consent. Israel has a US-modelled fair-use provision (Copyright Act 2007, s.19); the Ministry of Justice issued a December 2022 opinion concluding that ML/AI training on publicly available copyright-protected works is typically covered by fair use — the most permissive AI/TDM position of any jurisdiction in this set. An Israeli Petach Tikva Magistrate's Court ruled in 2013 that publishing a full-text RSS feed constitutes an implied license to republish the content (subject to revocation on clear notice). Israel has no EU sui generis database right. Privacy is governed by the Protection of Privacy Law 5741-1981, comprehensively overhauled by Amendment 13 (passed August 2024, in force 14 August 2025): Amendment 13 substantially strengthens enforcement powers, increases fines to millions of shekels with multipliers for large-scale databases or sensitive data, grants the Privacy Protection Authority (PPA) cease-and-desist authority, and the PPA has stated explicitly that data scraping requires informed consent from data subjects. Israel holds EU adequacy status (reaffirmed January 2024, though under civil society pressure as of mid-2025). Cross-border data transfer is moderate-risk reflecting current adequacy status.