I don't have a high opinion of Cloudflare. I doubt if anyone here does. But in this, I'm behind them. They have announced that they will block AI crawlers from all their sites unless they pay for access.

https://gizmodo.com/free-lunch-is-ov...web-2000623837

How is that going to war? That's basically just a handshake with the big boys like google and meta and microsoft that they'll be the ones to get to crawl websites with AI crawlers, lol.

I'm therefore guessing on a 'cahoots' situation.

Precisely - this is simply another example of established companies stifling competition.

Here's a direct link to Cloudflare blog entry: //blog.cloudflare.com/content-independence-day-no-ai-crawl-without-compensation/

Anyone who reads that can see it's not really about "going to war", because they've already announced their next move is to feed the disease.

Gee! Who knew Embrace, Extend, Extinguish == War?

To quote from the headline of the report

I would argue that, in the phrase "taking for free," the operative word is not "free," but "taking." Much of this "free" content is copyright and therefore someone's intellectual property which being used often without permission and certainly without acknowledgement.

I would also argue that reining in AIbots will hardly "end the open internet as we know it," but it may save a lot of electricity.

I don't see how making Cloudflare's making money off this is going to help those persons and entities whose intellectual property is being--er--(ab)used for training, but this not a black-and-white issue by any means.

Just a few thoughts.

Someone was stealing our stuff. Cloudflare wants to CHARGE for LETTING them steal our stuff. They are not protecting anyone, they just want a cut of the action! It should read "Cloudflare goes to whore"!

wpeckham, thank you.

That dart hit the bullseye.

^^ Ditto!

+1 virtual rep