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Or you could let information be free, at least the stuff that’s on the public net.

As for issues like bots overloading websites or using too many resources scaling laws will take care of it quickly, it’s not like you can’t serve thousands of RPS from a Raspberry Pi these days.

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I don't think regulation will stop web scraping, not least of which because it can be done from locations outside the jurisdiction of the regulations.

> we have to acknowledge the system is broken

The system is broken. It probably takes, what, 10 seconds or less to use a residential or foreign proxy, 6+ months to internationally track and prosecute a single offender? So like a million times more effort going the regulatory route.

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Just as criminal laws don't end all crimes, copyright laws and anti-scraping regulation won't end all scraping. But it will greatly reduce it and limit it to rogue actors. Two examples I can cite here are the laws against email spams and laws against unsolicited marketing calls - they had a definite impact in reducing both (even in India, from where I am, where implementation of laws are often lax).
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Exactly. Bot activity is a problem of volume, not all-or-nothing. Solving 95% of it would be a win.
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