Potential copyright infringement
Since the introduction of the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) and the robots.txt blocking scheme in 1994, search engines have promised to respect this standard and avoid crawling blocked content, according to Höppner.
However, despite claiming otherwise, Perplexity seems to disregard these standards, Höppner claims.
“At least the larger players did keep their promise,” said Höppner. “By intentionally circumventing paywalls, [Perplexity] could hardly have shouted louder for some legal attention. We are not just talking about taking a legal risk, we are talking about intentional copyright infringement.”
Short-term gain, long-term variability
While deals with AI companies may seem tempting for cash-strapped publishers, they can cause long-term damage to the brand, said Shah, strengthening AI models and undermining publishers.
“The money is good [for publishers] for the next five to 10 years, depending on the deal,” he said. “But what happens after that? That’s the unknown part of the story.”
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