New York is set to become the first state to impose guardrails on “stealth crawlers,” or unauthorized software that trawls news sources to scrape content.
The New York measure defines a stealth crawler as any software that retrieves, scrapes or otherwise accesses a website, including AI agents. Under the bill, the attorney general’s office would be able to sue companies that fail to disclose such activity. Violations could net civil penalties of up to $15,000 per day.
I hope those tools are exempt because, just like a browser, they respond only to specific commands issued by a human user. They don’t “crawl” pages in the way we describe bots that jump from page to page.
🤔
If said companies dont fall under new York jurisdiction, what happens then?
“This website or search engine is not designed for the state of new york” I assume is going to be a disclaimer we will be seeing soon.
Soooo, that means archive.is too. This fucking sucks.
I hope those tools are exempt because, just like a browser, they respond only to specific commands issued by a human user. They don’t “crawl” pages in the way we describe bots that jump from page to page.
Isn’t there something like 340 news sites that actively block them already?
Thanks, that becomes the cost of doing business. Harumph.