Re: Political economy of distributed search (was topical search...)

Jeremy.Ellman (jeremy@mari.co.uk)
Fri, 3 May 1996 11:41:19 +0100

> The simple fact is that integration is
It's impossible to block, because there's
> no way for a service to determine a normal user query from a
> WebCompass query (unless the WebCompass folks choose to do so, eh
> Brian?)
>

Disagree. You can refuse to reply to any GET/POST etc that does not contain a USER-AGENT
you like. Eg Reply straight in MOZILLA etc but ask interactive questions of other
browsers. This would block these robots (unless they were going to spoof -- but what
commercial product could do this on copyright grounds?)

Jeremy Ellman
MARI Computer Systems UK.