EFF Joins 18 Civil Rights Organizations Calling on Governor Hochul to Reject the Stealth Crawler Prohibition Act

Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) joining of 18 civil rights organizations to reject the Stealth Crawler Prohibition Act marks a significant opposition to the proposed legislation. The Act, aimed at prohibiting stealth crawlers, has been framed as a measure to protect local journalism, but the EFF and other organizations argue that it may have unintended consequences on the internet ecosystem. For website owners, this means that if the Stealth Crawler Prohibition Act is passed, they may face restrictions on how they can use web scraping and crawling tools, potentially impacting their ability to monitor and analyze AI bot traffic on their sites. This could lead to difficulties in managing llms.txt files and tracking AI bot interactions, ultimately affecting their understanding of website usage patterns. To prepare for potential changes, website owners can take the following actionable steps: review their current web scraping and crawling practices to ensure compliance with existing regulations, monitor updates on the Stealth Crawler Prohibition Act, and consider implementing alternative methods for tracking AI bot traffic, such as using AI-specific analytics tools or regularly updating their llms.txt files to reflect changing bot behaviors.