4 ms·

IMO, yes. And you can also trespass users - prevent them from ever coming back - even as you provide a business generally open to the public.

dylan604 3y ago
much like a physical business having the right to refuse service, a website should also be able to refuse serving data to users that have abused the service. a bartender says you've had too many, so no more service. websites can rate limit as well. we recently saw Musk test this concept.
- jraph 3y ago
  Where I live, you can't really legally refuse serving an individual without a strong reason. And if you did, you'd better be able to prove that you didn't do it for discriminatory reasons. Here, bartenders can say you've had too many, they are supposed to stop selling you alcohol if they think it could be dangerous for you or other people. This is one of the cases where not only the business can refuse to serve you, it also has to. Now, I'm not a lawyer but I wouldn't expect robots.txt to be legally enforceable. Of course, in any case, the website can totally refuse to fulfill a request, rate limit, etc. I'd say this is not comparable to the bartender or a business refusing to serve you though. Responding to an HTTP request is not offering a commercial service. And if it is, whatever legal document that promises you the service can totally specify that they won't promise to answer your robot.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    If you're being an nuisance and causing the other patrons to have a less than ideal experience, absolutely, you should be asked to leave. If your site is constantly getting scraped and your service is affected due to it which causes other users to have slowed responses, you should absolutely be able to refuse requests from known knuckleheads. To this day, bars have a list of "refuse entry". Sporting teams have life time bans to hooligans. Sure, the ban hammer should be slow to swing, but it shouldn't a never allowed to swing situation.
    - jraph 3y ago
      100% agree :-)

dylan604 3y ago

much like a physical business having the right to refuse service, a website should also be able to refuse serving data to users that have abused the service. a bartender says you've had too many, so no more service. websites can rate limit as well. we recently saw Musk test this concept.

jraph 3y ago
Where I live, you can't really legally refuse serving an individual without a strong reason. And if you did, you'd better be able to prove that you didn't do it for discriminatory reasons. Here, bartenders can say you've had too many, they are supposed to stop selling you alcohol if they think it could be dangerous for you or other people. This is one of the cases where not only the business can refuse to serve you, it also has to. Now, I'm not a lawyer but I wouldn't expect robots.txt to be legally enforceable. Of course, in any case, the website can totally refuse to fulfill a request, rate limit, etc. I'd say this is not comparable to the bartender or a business refusing to serve you though. Responding to an HTTP request is not offering a commercial service. And if it is, whatever legal document that promises you the service can totally specify that they won't promise to answer your robot.
- dylan604 3y ago
  If you're being an nuisance and causing the other patrons to have a less than ideal experience, absolutely, you should be asked to leave. If your site is constantly getting scraped and your service is affected due to it which causes other users to have slowed responses, you should absolutely be able to refuse requests from known knuckleheads. To this day, bars have a list of "refuse entry". Sporting teams have life time bans to hooligans. Sure, the ban hammer should be slow to swing, but it shouldn't a never allowed to swing situation.
  - jraph 3y ago
    100% agree :-)