> scrapers slow down their site and that's why they use robots.txt
a poorly written scraper may really slow down your site, especially if it wasn't intended to be scrapped repeatedly. There should be something to be said about frequency which scrapers should follow (specified by the website owner via a robots.txt like spec).
But website owners cannot demand unreasonable frequencies (such as once a year!), and what constitutes unreasonable is up for debate.
I don't think a poorly written scraper would follow robots.txt rules according to spec. So, in any case the site should have other measures (rate limiting?) anyway.
If a robot misbehaves, it'll either be blocked or it'll go to the networks abuse section and that bot will be taken down. That a site possibly could have some kind of technical solution to this doesn't matter.
Precisely - the solution here needs to be that the server blocks the robot - if it can differentiate it from other traffic that is. That's all well and good and that's the solution which should be used here. If you don't want to be archived, block the IP.
a poorly written scraper may really slow down your site, especially if it wasn't intended to be scrapped repeatedly. There should be something to be said about frequency which scrapers should follow (specified by the website owner via a robots.txt like spec).
But website owners cannot demand unreasonable frequencies (such as once a year!), and what constitutes unreasonable is up for debate.