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300 Publishers Press Congress for AI Bot Scraping Disclosure Rules
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300 Publishers Press Congress for AI Bot Scraping Disclosure Rules

Reports that about 300 publishers, including Condé Nast and Hearst, are lobbying Congress to pass the bipartisan Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, introduced in the House in July. The bill would make AI scraping bots disclose their identity and purpose to site owners, with FTC civil penalties and state attorney general enforcement. It also lists the publisher AI licensing deals with OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon, and Ziff Davis's copyright suit against OpenAI. Useful as a snapshot of the push for scraper-transparency regulation and the licensing-versus-litigation split among publishers.

TL;DR 300 publishers back the Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, which would require AI scraping bots to disclose identity and purpose or face FTC civil penalties.
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What it claims

About 300 publishers, with executives tied to Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Vogue and Vanity Fair, lobbied in Washington for the Stealth Bot Prohibition Act. The lobbying was reported by Mashable on September 30, 2026. The bill is bipartisan and was introduced in the House in July; the page gives no year. It targets "stealth bots", meaning unidentified AI agents that scrape and index site content without disclosure. Such bots would have to identify themselves and their purpose to site owners or face FTC civil penalties, and attorneys general could also enforce it.

The News/Media Alliance backs the bill. Its stated rationale is relevant to anyone running crawlers or bot defenses. Danielle Coffey, the alliance's president, said "existing technical tools simply aren't enough" against bots that "disguise their identity." The publishers are seeking a legal remedy because they consider blocking by user agent and robots rules ineffective against spoofed crawlers.

Who has deals with whom

The page names the licensing counterparties that the summary only groups by company:

AI companyPublishers named
OpenAICondé Nast (multi-year, 2024), AP, The Atlantic, TIME, The Guardian, Axios; Washington Post journalism shown in ChatGPT
GoogleAP (January 2025, described as Google's first AI licensing deal)
MicrosoftAP, People Inc., USA Today Co.
MetaSeven publishers including CNN and Fox News (multi-year licensing and training)
AmazonNew York Times, Condé Nast, Hearst

Condé Nast and Hearst are leading the disclosure push while also licensing content to OpenAI and Amazon. On the litigation side, Ziff Davis sued OpenAI in April 2025 for copyright infringement covering both training and operation.

Limits

  • The bill is described only at headline level. The page gives no bill number, sponsors, committee status, penalty amounts or definition of "AI scraping bot." It also does not say how disclosure would work, for example through a user-agent string, a registry or a robots extension. Read the bill text before you change crawler behavior.
  • The article is secondhand, built on Mashable's report. It is marked as "produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence."
  • There is a conflict of interest. Ziff Davis is the parent of Mashable, the primary source, and is itself suing OpenAI.
  • Nothing is stated about the bill's odds of passage or any industry opposition.

Organisations named here

  • Condé Nast
  • Hearst
  • News/Media Alliance
  • OpenAI
  • Google
  • Microsoft
  • Meta
  • Amazon
  • Associated Press
  • The Atlantic
  • TIME
  • The Guardian
  • Axios
  • The Washington Post
  • People Inc.
  • USA Today Co.
  • CNN
  • Fox News
  • The New York Times
  • Ziff Davis
  • Mashable
  • Federal Trade Commission
  • Congress
  • Danielle Coffey
  • Debi Chirichella
  • Roger Lynch
  • Stealth Bot Prohibition Act

Technologies named here

  • ChatGPT

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