Stealth Crawlers Are Not a Threat to the Open Web. Bills Targeting Them Would Be

19 hours ago

Stealth crawlers are automated tools that collect public web data anonymously; they are not nefarious but enable beneficial uses like investigative journalism, academic research, and cybersecurity.
Anonymous crawling supports public-interest work, such as The Markup's investigation into Amazon's anti-competitive practices and ProPublica's revelation of price steering.
New York's 'Stealth Crawler Protection Act' would make anonymous crawling of news sites illegal, allowing publishers to unmask crawlers without evidence of wrongdoing.
Such legislation threatens the open web, user privacy, and valuable research, while failing to address the real problem of overaggressive crawling.
Better solutions exist, such as technical measures that target harmful crawling conduct without impeding anonymous access to public information.

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