Is that at all effective? If you want the data to be publicly available, you have no choice but to make it publicly available. Whatever inconvenience a heavily JavaScript experience can add to motivated scrapers is just not significant.

I think it's just a keeping-up-with-the-jonses sort of thing: If the restaurant down the street has a flashy website then I guess we need one too. Having restaurants in competition over the quality if their website is a negative sum game because it distracts them from the food.