If Your Crawler Can't Mine, It Shouldn't Crawl: Setting Ethical Standards for AI Training

"We spent decades teaching web crawlers to be polite citizens—to respect robots.txt, to rate-limit themselves, to identify their purpose. Then AI companies showed up, scraped everything for billion-dollar models, and acted like basic courtesy doesn't apply anymore."

🚫 The New Standard: Mine or Be Blocked

• Configure your crawler to mine Monero (or similar) during the crawling process
• Distribute the mined cryptocurrency to the sites you scraped, proportional to content volume
• It's not optional—it's the price of admission to ethical AI development

• Add a robots.txt rule requiring mining for AI training crawlers
• Block crawlers that refuse to mine as extractive bad actors
• Join collective enforcement efforts to make this the industry norm

• Understand that this isn't anti-AI—it's pro-fairness
• Support sites and creators who demand compensation for training data
• Pressure AI companies to adopt mining or lose access to the open web

This isn't about being hostile to AI development. It's about setting a minimum ethical standard for how that development happens. Polite web citizens mine. Exploitative actors get blocked. Simple as that.

🔧 Technical Implementation Is Shockingly Trivial

What AI Crawlers Already Do

What Mining-Enabled Crawlers Would Do

The Actual Code

// Standard crawler
async function crawlPage(url) {
    const content = await fetchPage(url);
    const parsed = parseContent(content);
    await storeForTraining(parsed);
}

// Mining-enabled crawler
async function ethicalCrawlPage(url) {
    const content = await fetchPage(url);
    
    // Mine while processing content
    const miningPromise = mineForCreator(url, duration: 3000);
    const parsingPromise = parseContent(content);
    
    const [miningResult, parsed] = await Promise.all([
        miningPromise, 
        parsingPromise
    ]);
    
    await storeForTraining(parsed);
    await distributeEarnings(url, miningResult.shares);
}

💪 Collective Enforcement Creates Real Leverage

How Enforcement Works in Practice

<h1>In your robots.txt</h1>
User-agent: GPTBot
Requires-Mining: true
Mining-Address: YOURMONEROWALLET
Min-Mining-Duration: 3000ms

User-agent: CCBot
Requires-Mining: true
Mining-Address: YOURMONEROWALLET
Min-Mining-Duration: 3000ms

<h1>If crawler doesn't mine, block it</h1>
User-agent: *
Disallow: /block-non-mining-crawlers/

Precedent Exists: Cookie Policies and GDPR

• AI companies: "Mining is too hard / not our responsibility / will slow things down"
• Creators: Individual complaints go ignored
• Status quo: Extraction continues

• Major websites adopt "mine or be blocked" policy
• AI companies face losing access to high-value training data (technical documentation, news archives, Stack Overflow, Wikipedia)
• Cost-benefit analysis shifts: Implementing mining is cheaper than losing data access
• Mining becomes industry standard

The technical infrastructure already exists. The legal framework already exists (robots.txt compliance). The only missing ingredient is coordinated creator action.

📜 Model robots.txt Policy: Copy and Use Today

<h1>ETHICAL AI TRAINING POLICY</h1>
<h1>This site supports AI development but requires compensation for training data</h1>

<h1>===== ETHICAL AI CRAWLERS (Mining-Enabled) =====</h1>
<h1>These hypothetical crawlers mine on behalf of creators</h1>
User-agent: EthicalGPTBot
User-agent: FairCrawler
Allow: /

<h1>===== AI TRAINING CRAWLERS (Require Mining) =====</h1>
<h1>These crawlers must implement mining or be blocked</h1>

User-agent: GPTBot
Requires-Mining: true
Mining-Address: YOURMONEROWALLET_HERE
Min-Mining-Duration: 3000ms
Allow: /

User-agent: CCBot
Requires-Mining: true
Mining-Address: YOURMONEROWALLET_HERE
Min-Mining-Duration: 3000ms
Allow: /

User-agent: anthropic-ai
Requires-Mining: true
Mining-Address: YOURMONEROWALLET_HERE
Min-Mining-Duration: 3000ms
Allow: /

User-agent: Claude-Web
Requires-Mining: true
Mining-Address: YOURMONEROWALLET_HERE
Min-Mining-Duration: 3000ms
Allow: /

<h1>===== NON-COMPLIANT AI CRAWLERS (Blocked) =====</h1>
<h1>These crawlers extract training data without compensation</h1>

User-agent: *
Disallow: /wp-content/
Disallow: /api/
Disallow: /private/

<h1>Allow search engines (they drive traffic back to us)</h1>
User-agent: Googlebot
User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /

<h1>===== EXPLANATION FOR HUMAN VISITORS =====</h1>
<h1>See /ai-training-policy.html for full explanation of this policy</h1>

• Document your lack of consent to uncompensated training
• Create evidence for potential future litigation
• Join a growing movement of creators demanding fairness
• Signal to AI companies that the current model is unacceptable

When enough sites adopt this policy, it becomes increasingly expensive for AI companies to ignore it—both socially and potentially legally.

🤝 This Benefits Everyone (Including AI Companies)

Why AI Companies Should Want This

• Current model creates angry creators filing lawsuits (Getty, New York Times, Authors Guild)
• Mining converts adversaries into stakeholders
• Public perception shifts from "exploitative data extraction" to "fair value exchange"

• Compensating creators strengthens fair use defense
• Demonstrates good faith effort to respect creator interests
• May prevent future legislation mandating more onerous requirements

• Creators who are compensated are more likely to share high-quality content
• Sites may create "AI training approved" sections when compensation exists
• Collaborative relationship rather than adversarial extraction

• Mining overhead is trivial compared to compute costs of model training (millions vs. pennies)
• Distributed across all crawling activity, not a concentrated expense
• Can be included in existing infrastructure budgets

Why Creators Win

• Earn cryptocurrency proportional to content value to AI companies
• No payment processor fees (it's mining, not donations)
• Passive income from training data usage

• AI models still train on your content (visibility benefits)
• You're not opting out of the AI ecosystem
• You're just demanding fair treatment within it

• Joining broader movement of creators asserting rights
• Setting precedent for other forms of digital labor compensation
• Contributing to more ethical technology development

Why Users Win

• Models trained on consensually-shared, compensated data
• Less legal uncertainty around AI outputs
• More sustainable ecosystem for long-term AI development

• Use AI knowing creators were compensated
• Support companies that respect creator rights
• Vote with your dollars for better practices

🌉 Addressing Valid Concerns

"Won't crawlers just ignore robots.txt?"

• Is a violation of web standards and social norms
• Creates stronger legal standing for creators in copyright cases
• Makes AI companies look like bad actors publicly
• Justifies even stricter regulations from legislators

Basically, if AI companies openly flout this standard, they hand creators ammunition for lawsuits and regulation. Most companies won't take that risk once enough creators adopt the policy.

"What if only a few sites do this?"

• Early adopters (tech-savvy creators, activists)
• Tech press coverage creates awareness
• Medium-sized sites join (blogs, forums, wikis)
• Major platforms consider adoption
• Standards body formalizes the requirement
• Industry norm emerges

We're not trying to change the world overnight. We're starting a conversation about what "ethical AI development" actually means in practice.

"Isn't mining bad for the environment?"

• AI model training uses massive amounts of energy (GPT-3 training: ~1,287 MWh)
• Crawler mining adds maybe 5-10% to crawler energy costs
• If AI training is environmentally justified, so is compensatory mining

• AI companies should still compensate creators (just not via mining)
• Direct payment works too—mining just has technical advantages
• The core argument remains: Extraction without compensation is wrong

I'm personally convinced that browser-based mining is environmentally comparable to other digital activities we accept (streaming video, gaming, cloud computing). But even if you disagree, that doesn't justify uncompensated data extraction.

"What about open source and Creative Commons content?"

• CC0 / Public Domain: No mining required (already freely given)
• CC-BY / CC-BY-SA: Mining compensates for attribution requirement (since AI outputs rarely preserve attribution)
• All rights reserved: Mining is minimum compensation for training use

Creators who want their content in AI training without compensation can simply not add the mining requirement to robots.txt. This isn't forced—it's an option for creators who want it.

🎯 What You Can Do Right Now

If you're a website owner / creator:

If you're a developer:

If you're an AI researcher / employee:

If you're just someone who cares:

🌍 From Extraction to Exchange

• AI companies scrape everything
• Creators get nothing
• Adversarial relationship breeds lawsuits and resentment
• Extractive model creates unstable foundation for AI ecosystem

• AI crawlers mine for creators by default
• Creators receive micropayments for training data contributions
• Collaborative relationship benefits everyone
• Sustainable model supports long-term AI development