In a win, SerpApi warned that Reddit planned to act as a “toll collector,” requiring payments for scraping when it doesn’t even own the content.

“Reddit seeks to consolidate its control over its users’ content so that it will be in a better position to tax that content. Reddit is not acting to protect its users; Reddit is clearing a path to exploit them,” SerpApi warned.

Similarly, SerpApi accused Google of asking the court to ignore that it’s the “largest scraper on the planet,” while agreeing to cut off other web scrapers from information that is “100 percent public.”

For Rose, there’s no winning for online users if, at the end of the fight, public access to data is cut off.

“It’s a very fraught time,” Rose said, acknowledging that it’s not just Reddit and Google but many publishers across the web that are currently tempted to use “whatever tool is available in the toolbox to tamper down” AI scraping.

Some publishers may be financially motivated, like Google and Reddit, while others may be protecting their infrastructure or taking a moral stance, Rose said. Whatever the motivation is, “it’s leading to this kind of broader ecosystem-wide consequence of re-enclosure,” she warned.

And although SerpApi expects to win, the problem with DMCA cases, she suggested, is that it can be difficult to predict the outcome.

“I’m very curious how this is going to play out with Reddit,” Rose said. “I’m always a little bit cynical because to some extent, whenever you get into the copyright realm, a lot of judges just decide it’s all vibes.”

Advance Publications, which owns Ars Technica parent Condé Nast, is the largest shareholder in Reddit.