Comment by randyl
1 day ago
The SQLite team faced a similar problem last year, and Richard Hipp (the creator of SQLite) made almost the same comment:
"The malefactor behind this attack could just clone the whole SQLite source repository and search all the content on his own machine, at his leisure. But no: Being evil, the culprit feels compelled to ruin it for everyone else. This is why you don't get to keep nice things...."
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I am with you in that this rhetoric is getting exhausting.
In this particular case though I don't think "evil” is a moral claim, more shorthand for cost externalizing behavior. Hammering expensive dynamic endpoints with millions of unique requests isn’t neutral automation, it's degrading a shared public resource. Call it evil, antisocial, or extractive, the outcome is the same.
> shorthand for cost externalizing behavior
I consider that evil, having no regard for the wellbeing of others for you own greed.
OK. How about shitty and selfish then?
What other word would you use? I find "evil" quite an apt description.
You can be ignorantly evil.
Absolutely evil.
Lawful Evil
When they routinely do things like take down public libraries yes I consider it evil too.
Sounds like you have zero empathy for the real costs AI is driving and feelings that this creates for website owners. How about you pony up and pay for your scraping?
There's zero evidence any of this is related to AI btw
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"Why don't you just clone the repo?" Yes. Why dont you?
If you're gonna grab a repo to make a code theft machine then at least dont ddos the servers while you're at it.
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"The malefactor behind this attack" isn't a complaint about the web crawler.
There are people behind the web crawler. If they’re so well funded they can exert a little effort to not so badly inconvenience people as they steal their training data.
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