Commentary: Stop the bad bots

News publishers across the country are struggling with a uniquely modern problem: Their webpages are being overrun with bots. Content written for human readers is being consumed by millions of these automated crawlers that comb the internet and often go out of their way to disguise their identity and steal content. These uninvited “bad bots,” many of which come from China or other countries, are slowing down publishers’ pages for users and undermining a healthy content licensing market that would support continued community coverage, ultimately impacting countless newsrooms’ ability to serve their readers. Publishers have tried to stop these bots…