Comment by za_creature

> you're proposing a law that says anybody with an inaccurate user agent string is in violation

No, I am proposing that if googlebot is not within that inaccurate query string, google is in violation.

> Sites could then try to either blacklist or whitelist user agents.

Yes, that is a desired outcome.

> If they do the first one, that doesn't work, because the scraping service can change it whenever they want.

That would put them in violation, and make them prosecutable. Of course you need to start collecting data to prove that it's automatic, but this is already happening today for the purpose of temporarily blocking an IP. Having this law means that you also have some punitive measures at the end of the rainbow.

> If they do the second one ...

Anyone pretending to be a common browser when they're not is in violation. In addition, under this law there's no incentive for anyone to pretend to be googlebot since _that_ can get them blocked. You are intentionally and repeatedly trying to obfuscate these facts.