Albany, NY – Today, the New York State Senate voted to pass the New York Stealth Crawler Prohibition Act, a bill that would require transparency for online scrapers, prohibiting “bad bots.” This first-of-its-kind legislation will prevent bots from anonymously accessing news sites without authorization, and instead require affirmative bot identification for attempting to crawl these sites.
The News/Media Alliance, in partnership with the New York News Publishers Association, has led the engagement with legislators in the effort to draft and promote legislation that protects publishers from bad bots. In recent weeks the bill has also been approved by the Assembly Committee on Science & Technology and the Standing Committee on Codes, and looks to pass the Assembly Rules Committee and a full Assembly floor vote soon.
In response to this vote, Danielle Coffey, President and CEO of the News/Media Alliance, said, “The New York Senate just took a strong stand for transparency and the health of our information ecosystem. Right now, news websites are drowning in bot traffic. Bad bots are disguising their identities to overload publisher servers and access the quality content on our sites, hurting our ability to serve readers. This bill would be a simple, common sense solution to this problem. By requiring transparency and accountability for bad actors, the New York Stealth Crawler Prohibition Act gives publishers the tools they need to defend themselves and provide quality and critical information.
We’re grateful for bill sponsor Senator Gianaris and the rest of the Senate for their commitment to supporting the news and media industry, and look forward to continuing to work with them and their counterparts in the Assembly to enhance and protect our ability to provide New Yorkers with continued access to the high-quality information that they need and deserve.”
