Set aside that there's a pretty big difference between AI scraping and illegal drug usage.
If the person using illegal drugs is on no way harming anyone but themselves and not being a nuisance, then yeah, I can get behind that. Put whatever you want in your body, just don't let it negatively impact anyone around you. Seems reasonable?
I think this is actually a good example despite how stark the differences are - both the nuisance AI scrapers and the drug addicts have negative externalities that while possible for them to self regulate, they are for whatever reasons proving unable to do so, and therefore cause other people to have a bad time.
Other commenters saying the usual “drugs are freedom” type opinions, but now having lived in China and Japan where drugs are dealt with very strictly (and basically don’t have a drug problem today), I can see the other side of the argument where in fact places feeling dirty and dangerous because of drugs - even if you think of addicts sympathetically as victims who need help - makes everyone else less free to live the lifestyle they would like to have.
More freedom for one group (whether to ruin their own lives for a high; or to train their AI models) can mean less freedom for others (whether to not feel safe walking in public streets; or to publish their little blog in the public internet).
> just don't let it negatively impact anyone around you.
Exactly! Which is why we don't want AI bots siphoning our bandwidth & processing power.