The point of tying it to identity verification isn’t to stop bad actors immediately. It’s to identify bad actors. With the current way platforms are developed it is impossible to identify bad actors. In this case, a human content producer sees OpenAI as a bad actor for taking their content and not attributing or paying them for it. Normally their revenue might be attained from advertising dollars which an indexing bot will bypass.

See I think that is only true for so long. People don't want easy ways to scrape data, they want to promote their efforts. Things could easily change which allow for easier identity verification. For example, Social Security numbers are seeing lots of criticism right now and there is call for a national digital ID that can be used instead. If a national ID were to be implemented it would offer a lane for something like verified access to happen. People already have a preference for platforms like Facebook where the farce is sold that it’s easier to identify real people by using it.

Then you tack that on with copyright infringement and blatant stealing that is happening with LLMs and there will be enough of a momentum for people to close off.

Especially on an internet where open platforms are constantly being attacked and devalued for being open. Content producers will only start sending minimal data to indexing bots, enough to get listed. SEO dependent sites will probably perish in this era.

Legal battles wont even matter if society shifts that way.