[lapinot]

"don't be monopolistic assholes" is in the constitution and laws of several countries, it should not be an appeal to morality. The real problem is that at any point anybody does a move constraining internet corps, they get mocked by everyone as "regulating things to death". Yes that's the goal. Their death, in their current form at least.

[pessimizer]

> "don't be monopolistic assholes" is in the constitution and laws of several countries,

No it's not. People who formulate laws are specific, unless they're either creating a law that is intended to be ignored, or if they're creating a law meant for selective enforcement.

You can check every constitution and law code all day, you're never going to find anything telling anyone not to impede the attempts of an application not to constantly scrape their webpage. This kind of talk is purposeless.

[Bakary]

That might be true in the anglophone world, but plenty of other populations aren't hostile to the idea of regulating the internet, and I don't mean the totalitarian countries. The GDPR is a ray of hope in this regard.

What prompted me to mention incentives in the first place is that the GP's framing of the problem is a common narcotic. Online is/ought-type complaining reduces the potential for action since the emotional need for signaling is already fulfilled. It's a trap I've fallen into many times myself. In itself, it's more dangerous at scale than any public mockery of regulation.