Ideally, there would be a better way for web hosts to block bandwidth-hogging, but not block bots. I don't think anyone cares if some automated user-agent requests a 1KB file from their web site. They care that automated systems are sucking down TBs per day, all day, every day.

Making people actually read content doesn't strike me as cruel. Tedious, sure, but not cruel. What is cruel is seeing all of our collective individuality and artistic expression jammed into an LLM, sold back to us by the token, and forced into our lives by an economy increasingly skewed towards holders of capital.