That is indistinguishable from not respecting robots.txt. There is a robots.txt on the root the first time they ask for it, and they read the page and follow its links regardless.
I agree with you. I only stated how the crawlers seem to work, if you read their pages or try to block/slow down them it seems clear that they scan-first-respect-after. But somehow people understood that I approve that behaviour.
For those bad crawlers, which I very much disapprove, "not respecting robots.txt" equals "don't even read robots.txt, or if I read it ignore it completely". For them, "respecting robots.txt" means "scan the page for potential links, and after that parse and respect robots.txt". Which I disapprove and don't condone.
For those bad crawlers, which I very much disapprove, "not respecting robots.txt" equals "don't even read robots.txt, or if I read it ignore it completely". For them, "respecting robots.txt" means "scan the page for potential links, and after that parse and respect robots.txt". Which I disapprove and don't condone.