A web browser isn't a bot as long as it's controlled by a human but it becomes one once it's automated.

You are entitled to your own emails, posts, etc but you are not entitled to crawl the internet for your own purposes without stating what they are and allowing websites an opt out.

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AnthonyMouse 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> A web browser isn't a bot as long as it's controlled by a human but it becomes one once it's automated.

That doesn't mean anything. All of the code in a browser is "automation" -- normal users aren't hand-crafting the hundreds of HTTP requests the browser makes to render a single web page. Meanwhile there is a human somewhere telling the scrapers what to scrape.

> You are entitled to your own emails, posts, etc

Is that somewhere in the proposed text?

> but you are not entitled to crawl the internet for your own purposes without stating what they are and allowing websites an opt out.

"Stating what they are" buys you nothing when you have no way of verifying it, and you're still not providing any way to distinguish this from investigative journalism or e.g. a new competing search engine.

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card_zero 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Using a computer to do "by hand" is a vague concept, yes, but laws routinely embrace vague concepts. You used it yourself! "Hand-crafting", you said. It could be pinned down more closely to something like a single action that happens quite soon after you press a button or ... and further wrangling could ensue because it's never going to have all the vagueness removed. It's probably relative to current norms of computer use and what we do or don't automate casually (and thus describe as "by hand").

	▲	AnthonyMouse 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> It could be pinned down more closely to something like a single action that happens quite soon after you press a button So leaving your webmail open is banned because it will still be checking for new messages three months after you opened the tab without any further human interaction. Likewise RSS readers or really any client which is intended to fetch new posts/messages when they appear. > It's probably relative to current norms of computer use and what we do or don't automate casually (and thus describe as "by hand"). Which is kind of exactly the problem. A new law would presumably still be on the books in ten or twenty years. Do we expect user agents by then to do only the things they do now, or will they get more capable? Banning them from becoming more capable is the problem.

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za_creature 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> All of the code in a browser is "automation"

I don't think you are interpreting what I said in good faith, but here goes:

If you use an API to control a browser into navigating to a certain webpage, as opposed to using human interface devices to assert said control.

And no, AI is not a human interface device.

	▲	simonra 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I am curious about your view on accessibility tooling. Often screen readers or speech to text tools would effectively be external pieces of software instrumenting for instance browsers through their APIs. And surely using local AI going forward could enhance the tooling while also making the users less dependent on a small market charging exorbitant prices for poor user experience. What viable paths do you see for users perfecting user agents for themselves when the big browsers further lose their plot and focus on what's fun to maintain or profitable to ship instead of optimising for every user individually?