[eli]

Isn’t that a choice the website owner should be able to make?

[jMyles]

Of course it's your choice to make.

Is someone forcing you to respond to requests you'd prefer to ignore?

[theamk]

yes, people like OP who get the farms of scrapers.

The website owners make their preferences clear with robots.txt, IP blocks and other antibot technology. Scrapers intentionally ignore owners' desires and force the to respond.

[paulryanrogers]

If crawlers are stealth DDoSing my site then I lose the ability to respond entirely.