do we want to change that? do we want to require scrapers to pay for network usage, like the ISPs were demanding from Netflix? is net neutrality a bad thing after all?
When scraping was mainly used to build things like search indexes which are ultimately mutually beneficial to both the website owner and the search engine, and the scrapers were not abusive, nobody really had a problem.
But for generative AI training and access, with scrapers that DDoS everything in sight, and which ultimately cause visits to the websites to fall significantly and merely return a mangled copy of its content back to the user, scraping is a bad thing. It also doesn't help that the generative AI companies haven't paid most people for their training data.
But for some reason corporations don't want that, I guess they want to be allowed to just take from the commons and give nothing in return :/
So much real human traffic that it brings their site down?
I mean yes it's a problem, but it's a good problem.
b) They have a complete lack of respect for robots.txt
I'm starting to think that aggressive scrapers are part of an ongoing business tactic against the decentralized web. Gmail makes self hosted mail servers jump through arduous and poorly documented hoops, and now self hosted services are being DDOSed by hordes of scrapers…
I can't speak for everyone, but the web should be free and scraping should be allowed insofar that it promotes dissemination of knowledge and data in a sustainable way that benefits our society and generations to come. You're doing the thing where you're trying to pervert the original intent behind those beliefs.
I see this as a clear example of the paradox of tolerance.