Have you contacted them and asked them to stop? If they continue, then you start to have legal rights. Figure out how to uniquely identify them, use mod_rewri

Have you contacted them and asked them to stop? If they continue, then you start to have legal rights. Figure out how to uniquely identify them, use mod_rewrite or an equivalent if you can determine a UserAgent or something unique. mod_evasive perhaps. Find a way to automate your pattern searches, i.e. x hits to site without fetching a single image or static asset, must be bot, deny. 80legs was doing this to a client, numerous requests to get them to stop hammering a site went unanswered. Same with cuil - though, cuil's bots finally got fixed.