[jfray2k22]

The section that Spiro included about robots.txt belies just how amateurish this attempt is. That file has become the effective standard for instructing web scraping utilities, but is nothing more than a strong recommendation and is absolutely not legally binding in any way.

It's bizarre that Spiro wouldn't already understand this, but even weirder that it appears he didn't even research the topic or have an associate/junior partner with more applicable tech knowledge give it the once over. Possibly, Spiro and Musk were provided that feedback and purposely ignored it due to their outsized egos.

What's most obnoxious though is that Musk fired the employees in question while avoiding paying their agreed severance, and then has the gall to invoke the specter of non-compete agreements. I would hope that Spiro, or his firm, would at least be aware that non-competes are unenforceable in California and many other states.

All of this shit is nutty as hell.