Just to further your knowledge of the ‘stranglehold’ phorm has in the UK. At a recent briefing in the UK parliament, in front of MP’s and Lords, the CEO of phorm accused Tim Berners-Lee of being a neo-luddite who did not understand the internet.

https://nodpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/priceless.gif

Hope you had the same ad campaign, else you won’t get that.

BT and Phorm seem to rewrite UK law and web standards as they go, so the IT community of the UK (or some of them) wrote a new standard themselves! Violate it at your peril.

http://www.parasitestxt.org/ (It’s a good read, have a wonder around)

Already it has scared the Amazon and Wiki empires off.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7999635.stm

http://techblog.wikimedia.org/.....-of-phorm/

And the European Union looks as if they have been forced to enshrine it into the European Convention on Human Rights.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7998009.stm

So, dear reader, learn the lesson; abuse robots.txt at your peril!