Prohibits the deployment of a stealth crawler in a manner that would damage, impair or burden the operation of a covered news source or otherwise cause a news source economic harm.
NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF LEGISLATION submitted in accordance with Assembly Rule III, Sec 1(f)
BILL NUMBER: A11292
SPONSOR: Rules (Otis) TITLE OF BILL:
An act to amend the general business law, in relation to prohibiting the
use of stealth crawlers
PURPOSE OR GENERAL IDEA OF BILL:
The New York Stealth Crawler Prohibition Act would prevent AI companies
from deploying stealth crawlers, or automated bots that access online
news sites, in a manner that damages the operation of the site.
SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:
Section one of the bill amends the general business law by adding a new
article 48.
- Section 1750 provides the short title, the New York Stealth Crawler
Prohibition Act.
- Section 1751 defines the following terms: crawler, covered news site,
journalism provider, person, service provider, and stealth crawler. For
the purposes of this article, an automated bot designed to access online
sites constitutes a "stealth crawler" if it accesses a covered news site
without disclosing its identity or purpose.
- Section 1752 provides that it shall be a violation of this article for
any person to deploy a stealth crawler in a manner that would damage,
impair or burden the operation of a covered news site or otherwise cause
a news site economic harm.
- Section 1753 relates to the enforcement of this article, authorizing
aggrieved journalism providers to seek an injunction and recover
damages. This section also authorizes journalism providers to request a
subpoena against a service provider for the identification of an alleged
violator.
- Section 1754 provides a severability clause. Section two of the bill
sets the effective date.
JUSTIFICATION:
Stealth web crawlers, or automated bots that access online sites while
obscuring their identities and who sent them, pose a growing threat to
New York's news publishers, digital markets and the public interest.
Artificial intelligence developers have begun to deploy these bots in
overwhelming volume in recent years in their efforts to obtain news
content for AI consumption. While most major companies identify their
bots, some unscrupulous actors take extra steps to disguise their iden-
tity and deceive the websites that they access.
Stealth crawlers impose significant operational costs on publishers'
technological infrastructure. Because these bots generate so much web
traffic to these news sites, all of which must be processed before the
bots can be filtered or blocked, publishers are forced to scale their
infrastructure to handle peak volumes. A paywall is not enough to stop
these stealth crawlers: some bots have been found to retrieve entire
articles hidden under a paywall. When publishers don't know who is
accessing their sites at a significant volume, they don't know who to
approach to negotiate marketplace agreements to facilitate access for
the crawling companies and compensate publishers for the hard work of
their dedicated journalists, or to enforce their rights. As a result,
publishers must invest millions of dollars in increased bandwidth and
enhanced cybersecurity tools to fend off the stealth crawlers.
We cannot continue to allow these stealth crawlers to weaken local jour-
nalism, a sector critical to democratic governance. New York State has a
compelling interest in cracking down on these automated bots to preserve
local journalism, safeguard digital infrastructure, and ensure fair
competition within its jurisdiction. The New York Stealth Crawler Prohi-
bition Act would, thus, make it unlawful to deploy unauthorized stealth
crawlers in a manner that would damage, impair or burden the operation
of a covered news site or otherwise cause the news site economic harm.
PRIOR LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:
This is a new bill.
FISCAL IMPLICATIONS FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS:
To be determined.
EFFECTIVE DATE:
This bill shall take effect on the ninetieth day after it shall have
become law.
STATE OF NEW YORK
________________________________________________________________________
11292
IN ASSEMBLY
May 8, 2026
___________
Introduced by COMMITTEE ON RULES -- (at request of M. of A. Otis) --
read once and referred to the Committee on Science and Technology
AN ACT to amend the general business law, in relation to prohibiting the
use of stealth crawlers
The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assem-bly, do enact as follows:
1 Section 1. The general business law is amended by adding a new article
2 48 to read as follows:
3 ARTICLE 48
4 NEW YORK STEALTH CRAWLER PROHIBITION ACT
5 Section 1750. Short title.
6 1751. Definitions.
7 1752. Stealth crawler disclosure.
8 1753. Stealth crawler prohibition.
9 1754. Enforcement.
10 1755. Severability.
11 § 1750. Short title. This article shall be known and may be cited as
12 the "New York stealth crawler prohibition act".
13 § 1751. Definitions. As used in this article, the following terms
14 shall have the following meanings:
15 1. "Crawler" means software that retrieves, scans, indexes, scrapes or
16 otherwise accesses a website or other internet source, including but not
17 limited to an online crawler, spider, fetcher, client, bot, user agent,
18 AI agent or equivalent tool.
19 2. "Covered news source" means the website or any other relevant
20 source of any print, television, radio, network, cable, satellite or
21 digital publication or service which:
22 (a) performs a public-information function comparable to that tradi-
23 tionally served by journalism organizations, such as newspapers, broad-
24 casters, magazines and other periodical publications;
25 (b) makes a substantial expenditure of labor, skill, and money to
26 create, edit, produce and distribute content including by engaging indi-
27 viduals to create, edit, produce and distribute original text, audio,
28 photo, illustrative or video content concerning matters or topics of
EXPLANATION--Matter in italics (underscored) is new; matter in brackets
[] is old law to be omitted.
LBD15525-03-6
A. 11292 2
1 interest or use to members of the public through activities such as
2 observation, video or audio recording events, interviews, research,
3 testing and analysis;
4 (c) publishes new content or updates its content on at least a monthly
5 basis and has a process for error correction and clarification; and
6 (d) has at least one thousand monthly active viewers, listeners, users
7 or subscribers in New York.
8 3. "Journalism provider" means any person that owns one or more
9 covered news sources.
10 4. "Operator" means any individual, partnership, association, firm, or
11 business entity, or any member, affiliate, subsidiary or beneficial
12 owner thereof.
13 5. "Person" means any individual, partnership, corporation, trust,
14 estate, co-operative, association, government or governmental subdivi-
15 sion, agency or other entity.
16 6. "Service provider" means an entity offering the transmission, rout-
17 ing or providing of connections for broadcast or digital online communi-
18 cations, between or among points specified or selected by a viewer,
19 listener, user or subscriber, of material of such user's choosing, with-
20 out modification to the content of the material as sent or received,
21 including an entity that provides internet access services.
22 7. "Stealth crawler" means a crawler that does not comply with section
23 seventeen hundred fifty-two of this article.
24 § 1752. Stealth crawler disclosure. A crawler that accesses a covered
25 news source shall disclose its identity and purpose at the time or
26 before it accesses the covered news source, including by:
27 (a) identifying itself via a valid and accurate user-agent string,
28 which shall state the identity of any software product making the
29 request, the version of such software product and the identity of the
30 company behind such software product; and
31 (b) disclosing the specific nature and purpose of such crawler, which
32 shall include all uses and purposes that the content of the covered news
33 source could be used for, at the time access is requested and in a
34 format that the journalism provider can access.
35 § 1753. Stealth crawler prohibition. It shall be a violation of this
36 article for any operator to deploy a stealth crawler in a manner that
37 would damage, impair or burden the operation of a covered news source or
38 otherwise cause a news source economic harm.
39 § 1754. Enforcement. 1. Whenever the attorney general shall believe
40 from evidence satisfactory to them that an operator has engaged in or is
41 about to engage in any of the acts or practices stated to be unlawful in
42 this article, they may bring an action in the name and on behalf of the
43 people of the state of New York to enjoin an operator from continuing
44 such unlawful acts or practices, and may seek civil penalties of up to
45 fifteen thousand dollars per day for each violation. If it shall appear
46 to the satisfaction of the court or justice that the defendant has
47 violated this article, no proof shall be required that any person has
48 been injured thereby. In such action preliminary relief may be granted
49 under article sixty-three of the civil practice law and rules.
50 2. (a) Pursuant to subdivision (c) of section thirty-one hundred two
51 of the civil practice law and rules, a journalism provider may request
52 the clerk of the supreme court, or a judge where there is no clerk, to
53 issue a subpoena prior to the institution of an action, to a service
54 provider for identification of an alleged violator.
55 (b) The clerk, or the judge where there is no clerk, shall within a
56 reasonable period of time issue and sign the proposed subpoena and
A. 11292 3
1 return it to the journalism provider for delivery to the service provid-
2 er.
3 (c) The subpoena shall authorize and order the service provider
4 receiving such subpoena to expeditiously disclose to the journalism
5 provider information sufficient to identify the alleged violator to the
6 extent such information is available to such service provider.
7 (d) A subpoena issued under this section shall include a provision
8 requiring the preservation of any relevant evidence in the possession of
9 the service provider.
10 § 1755. Severability. If any clause, sentence, paragraph, section or
11 part of this article shall be adjudged by any court of competent juris-
12 diction to be invalid and after exhaustion of all further judicial
13 review, the judgment shall not affect, impair or invalidate the remain-
14 der thereof, but shall be confined in its operation to the clause,
15 sentence, paragraph, section or part of this act directly involved in
16 the controversy in which the judgment shall have been rendered.
17 § 2. This act shall take effect on the ninetieth day after it shall
18 have become a law.
