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40 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
40 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
# Frequently asked questions
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## How do we know AI companies/bots respect `robots.txt`?
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The short answer is that we don't. `robots.txt` is a well-established standard but compliance is voluntary. There is no enforcement mechanism.
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## Can we block crawlers based on user agent strings?
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Yes, provided the crawlers identify themselves and your application/hosting supports doing so.
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## What can we do if a bot doesn't respect `robots.txt`?
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That depends on your stack.
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- Nginx
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- [Blocking Bots with Nginx](https://rknight.me/blog/blocking-bots-with-nginx/) by Robb Knight
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- [Blocking AI web crawlers](https://underlap.org/blocking-ai-web-crawlers) by Glyn Normington
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- Apache httpd
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- [Blockin' bots.](https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/blockin-bots/) by Ethan Marcotte
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- [Blocking Bots With 11ty And Apache](https://flamedfury.com/posts/blocking-bots-with-11ty-and-apache/) by fLaMEd fury
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> [!TIP]
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> The snippets in these articles all use `mod_rewrite`, which [should be considered a last resort](https://httpd.apache.org/docs/trunk/rewrite/avoid.html). A good alternative that's less resource-intensive is `mod_setenvif`; see [httpd docs](https://httpd.apache.org/docs/trunk/rewrite/access.html#blocking-of-robots) for an example. You should also consider [setting this up in `httpd.conf` instead of `.htaccess`](https://httpd.apache.org/docs/trunk/howto/htaccess.html#when) if it's available to you.
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- Netlify
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- [Blockin' bots on Netlify](https://www.jeremiak.com/blog/block-bots-netlify-edge-functions/) by Jeremia Kimelman
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- Cloudflare
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- [I’m blocking AI crawlers](https://roelant.net/en/2024/im-blocking-ai-crawlers-part-2/) by Roelant
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## Why should we block these crawlers?
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They're extractive, confer no benefit to the creators of data they're ingesting and also have wide-ranging negative externalities.
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**[How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I.](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/06/technology/tech-giants-harvest-data-artificial-intelligence.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ik0.Ofja.L21c1wyW-0xj&ugrp=m)**
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> OpenAI, Google and Meta ignored corporate policies, altered their own rules and discussed skirting copyright law as they sought online information to train their newest artificial intelligence systems.
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**[How AI copyright lawsuits could make the whole industry go extinct](https://www.theverge.com/24062159/ai-copyright-fair-use-lawsuits-new-york-times-openai-chatgpt-decoder-podcast)**
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> The New York Times' lawsuit against OpenAI is part of a broader, industry-shaking copyright challenge that could define the future of AI.
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## How can I contribute?
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Open a pull request. It will be reviewed and acted upon appropriately. **We really appreciate contributions** — this is a community effort.
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