Yes, bot traffic is killing the open web. What's your point?

Regulate against inaccessible and privacy invasive CAPTCHA (done and done in EU) and regulate against disruptive bot traffic (what's the hold-up there? Oh, I see, it requires actual competent law enforcement... That's a hard one). Me only half-joking while standing on my high EU horse.

Once regulations against disruptive bot traffic are effective enough that you don't need captchas, please ban captchas. But I don't see why you would do it the other way around. (Unless you secretly know that effective regulations against bot traffic are impossible.)

Oh I do believe they are possible. It is just high time that the units fighting against organised crime heavily expanded their scope to illicit online activities that actually cause financial harm by entities to entities smaller than the movie/music/publishing industries.

> (Unless you secretly know that effective regulations against bot traffic are impossible.)

Have you tried register your phone number in the DO-NOT-CALL list (or your local equivalent)?

Did it stop anything?

Have you seen this: https://trog.qgl.org/20081217/the-why-your-anti-spam-idea-wo... ? You're proposing a legislative change, and bots in the US, Russia, China, whatever can care less about the acts of the EU parliament.

I also don't see how EU solves issues with CAPTCHAs. Anonymous CAPTCHAs are allowed in the EU.

Thank you for that, though I'd rather choose 'The police will not put up with it' and either 'The politicians are too incompetent' or 'Underestimate how much money there is in it'

Anonymous CAPTCHAs are fine so long as they're accessible for people with disabilities. I would not venture to say I know of such one as a service...

If you are a EU government wanting a no-captcha experience on your website you could solve it thusly:

* Don't have captcha.

* Make it illegal for bots to access.

* Block foreign ips.

* Make it illegal to provide a proxy for foreign bots.

Yeah, that's great until you're a european citizen who needs to access a government service while travelling in the US, or living in French Guyana, or any amount of exceptions to your clever idea.

If you travel to places unwilling to enforce basic rules of civility you should be willing to suffer additional consequences, rather than having the entirety of Europe continue to suffer because we are unwilling to do the right thing, which is to put an end to the far west of the internet.

Countries unwilling to sign regulations that would have them lock up scammers/DDoS botters and other toxic e-criminal, or unwilling to enforce their own laws when they exist, should not be allowed to continue to pollute the internet at large. Block them until they learn their lesson.

In the west, you can and will lose your access to the internet even if you are not doing this sort of shit on purpose but have an infected computer. See for example : https://it.slashdot.org/story/05/04/13/0320249/major-aussie-...

We enforce the rules on our own citizens, why are we tolerating this level of criminal traffic from China, India, and, the worst of them all, Russia, the country through which we are very much fighting a proxy war right now in funding Ukraine?

We can send missiles to kill russians but we can't cut them from the internet at large ? Really?

Internet access is not a human right. Just like driving on the roads is not a human right and terrible drivers get their license revoked.

I guess you could offer travelers a captcha. Also note that the fourth point didn't prohibit proxies in all cases, just proxying for bad things.

Also confirming that banning foreign traffic is the go-to eGovernment without CAPTCHA experience in Bulgaria.