User agent strings are a sad consequence of websites incorrectly parsing them to enable functionality, resulting in a "every bug becomes a contract" type of situation.

That being said, if you include GOOGLEBOT in your 1k long query string, alongside a very long page describing your crawlers, how to identify them, how to block them and how to set limits, no judge will find you guilty of concealing your purpose.

As for why the law is written as is instead of banning more specific functionality, it's so assholes don't get any ideas on how to bypass it.

> User agent strings are a sad consequence of websites incorrectly parsing them to enable functionality, resulting in a "every bug becomes a contract" type of situation.

It's a bit old but https://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/ is always a good parable.