[ornxka]

Different resource usage patterns aside, why do people think that robots are somehow less "legitimate" consumers of data than their human operators? Do the authors of this article think that humans only use data for purposes sanctioned by its producers?

I think the world would be a much better place if we stopped treating programmatic access to interfaces differently than human access to it. Anybody can learn to code.

[car_analogy]

> Do the authors of this article think that humans only use data for purposes sanctioned by its producers?

That's the unfortunate direction copyright law is moving in. In the EU, "data mining" is considered a right separate from mere access, and the carve-outs for allowing it without permission from the data owner are very limited:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/text-and-data-mining-e...