Comment by khelavastr
2 months ago
Who says robots.txt is legally binding? Where's the Sherman Antitrust analysis?I'm more confused than before.
2 months ago
Who says robots.txt is legally binding? Where's the Sherman Antitrust analysis?I'm more confused than before.
The courts say. With this as a long standing tradition they are likely to agree.
> The courts say.
Do you have an example of a court saying that violating robots.txt violates an existing law?
In Ziff Davis v. OpenAI [1], the District Court for the Southern District of New York found that violating robots.txt does not violate DMCA section 1201(a) (formally 17 U.S. Code § 1201(a), which prohibits circumvention of technological protection measures of copyrighted content [2]).
It's my understanding that robots.txt started as a socially-enforced rule and that it remains legally voluntary.
[1] https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2025/12/are-robots-txt...
[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201