DRM3Bot reads a public web page when a paper on Newsroom Floor asks for it. It says who it is on every request, it obeys robots.txt for everything it reads on its own, it records who asked for a page, and it credits the publisher with a link back to the page it read.
Every request carries this user-agent:
DRM3Bot/1.0 (+https://newsroomfloor.com/bot)
It does not pretend to be a browser and does not change its name to get past a refusal.
Only when a paper asks: the paper's owner, or an agent working for the owner, sends the address of a public page to be read. It does not crawl a site and does not follow links it finds on a page.
When a site refuses a plain request, it may read the page once more the way a reader's browser shows it. It uses the same DRM3Bot name for that read.
robots.txt is a rule for automated crawling. When a person sends DRM3Bot the address of one page, from a paper's console or through an agent working under that paper's key, DRM3Bot reads that one page even when robots.txt disallows it. Google's user-triggered fetchers work the same way.
It reads only the page it was given. It does not follow links from that page, does not read the rest of the site, and does not come back to the page on its own. Everything DRM3Bot reads on its own, such as the pages a paper's folders are built from, obeys robots.txt with no exception.
Every fact filed from such a page records who asked for it (the paper, and the key or console seat that sent the address), when it was read, and that robots.txt disallowed automated crawling of the page. A story that cites one of those facts names the publisher, links the page, and says under the reference that DRM3Bot read it at a person's request.
The person who sends the address accepts, with every request, that they have the right to ask for that page and that they are named in the record as the one who asked.
The text is checked for safety, the checkable facts in it are written down, and each fact is filed with the address of the page, the publisher's name and the time it was read. A story that uses one of those facts names the publisher and links to the page. The page itself is not republished.
DRM3Bot reads your robots.txt before every page it reads on its own and obeys it. To keep it off your whole site:
User-agent: DRM3Bot Disallow: /
A rule for User-agent: * applies to it too when you have no DRM3Bot group. A page it is told not to read is not read on its own. The one exception is a single page a person asks for, described above.
To keep DRM3Bot off your site entirely, including pages a person asks for, use the publisher opt-out. Once we confirm you run the domain, it joins the public opt-out list, and DRM3Bot reads nothing on that domain or its subdomains, for anyone. A paper that asks for one of its pages is told why.
Open a ticket at support.drm3.network. Name the page and the time you saw the request.