[Air-L] How to stop AI from eating the open Internet

[Joly MacFie]

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily/2025/12/02/how-to-stop-ai-from-eating-the-open-internet-00673326

(extracted)

SAN FRANCISCO — In a startup hub near Chinatown, a few dozen programmers
> grabbed light beers and flipped open their laptops for a series of
> demonstrations on how to get around data scraping blockers.


The programmers in the room had their own agenda, trying to find ways to
> keep public data accessible in the spirit of the original Web.


They were also there to figure out a pretty important question: What
> exactly are the rules around data scraping?


It turns out that there aren’t many — in part because government regulators
> haven’t really focused on this increasingly important issue. Internet data
> is now becoming a crucial resource in the AI boom, and there are ongoing
> clashes between major tech platforms that are trying to both hoard and
> capitalize on that data.


Caught in the crossfire are advocates for an open internet, and small-time
> content creators who want to get compensation for their work. It’s a thorny
> dilemma: The internet was built on a communal ethos of free-flowing
> information, but that has also allowed AI companies to hoover up content
> for free, and make immense profits from it.


Legally speaking, they’re largely doing it in a void. Federal law only
> loosely touches on data scraping, and courts have been slow to develop a
> body of law around the field. Instead, the industry mostly follows a set of
> customs and voluntary standards.



The meetup was partly a tech demo, and partly a discussion on how to update
> those standards and influence the process. “If we’re not setting our own
> best practices, someone else will be doing it for us,” said Jo Levy, chair
> of the Alliance for Responsible Data Collection
> <https://responsibledatacollection.org/>, which advocates for preserving
> open access to internet data.



Levy has been trying to convince more people who want to uphold the
> foundational openness of the internet — but who might not have the
> resources or the cachet of a big company — to get involved in the important
> drudgery of standards setting. During the San Francisco event, she
> encouraged attendees to sign up for the email lists where the boards often
> discuss the development of new protocols.


“A lot of what we’re trying to do with ARDC is to make sure that interested
> parties are aware of these discussions and can participate,” Levy told DFD.
> “If the standards are going to be more about helping one business [...]
> those standards are not going to be as widely adopted.”


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Joly MacFie  +12185659365
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