[serf]

>Seriously, I hate scrapers. I hate the people who make scrapers. I hate their lack of ethics. Fuck those guys.

if a scraper is effectively DDoSing you, call it what it is -- a denial of service attack.

i've found from experience that most scraping attempts originate against host-sites that are generally user-hostile; no APIs to use, JS tricks to bother user browsing, or groups that profit from first-mover advantage and thus try to obscure data.

So, if your sites are commonly the victim of scrapers that are harvesting publicly available data i've found that it's more useful to ask myself what alternatives I could provide those that feel the need to scrape.

As for a 'lack of ethics' on how publicly available data is wrangled -- well, i'll just say that I feel that it remains the responsibility of the administrator rather than being something to push the blame onto clients for. There are plenty of technical avenues to pursue before appealing to morals and ethics for help.