Re:Browsers' bid for relevance is turning them into time-bombs
by erlehmann_ on Saturday July 09, 2016 @09:40AM
(#12061259)
robots.txt is not DRM: it can be freely implemented by anyone without special knowledge – and ignoring it does not lead to a criminal investigation.
The web already has that kind of DRM and always did: robots.txt, enforced by social convention rather than encryption.
And yes some companies ban crawlers and try to get their content out of search engines for questionable reasons. More often, they try to strongarm Google so their content is still there, but they get paid for the privilege, which is not a reasonable approach and thus not supported by the robots.txt "DRM" protocol.