Perhaps the "conflict" lies in the notion that a "developer trying to just get some stuff updated into a spreadsheet" is somehow different from "people right now that want to keep stuff acceessible to humans and not have it scraped for models [for use by developers]."

What if all users of the www were treated equally. There is in practice a conflict of interest between www users calling themselves "developers" and the rest of www users. Yet these "developers" purport to act 100% on behalf of the rest of www users, not themselves. The failure to acknowledge any self-interest is dishonest.