Cloudflare's new policy, effective July 1, 2025, which blocks AI bots from scraping web content by default without explicit publisher permission. This move, championed by CEO Matthew Prince, aims to empower content creators and news organizations struggling with lost revenue due to AI overviews that reduce traffic to their sites. The company is also experimenting with a "pay-per-crawl" model, allowing publishers to charge AI companies for access to their content. While some worry about potential limitations to web transparency, the initiative is largely seen as a crucial step toward fair compensation for original content in the age of AI.