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A group of Democrats are introducing the “Stopping Grinch Bots Act”, a proposal with that is aimed at preventing (or at least curtailing) the use of bots to snatch up stocks of goods from online retailers.
Representative Paul Tonko, Senator Richard Blumenthal, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Ben Ray Luján announced the bill on November 29, which aims to “crack down on cyber Grinches using ‘bot’ technology to quickly buy up whole inventories of popular holiday toys and resell them to parents at higher prices.”
This isn’t the first time Democrat lawmakers have tried this; as PC Mag point out, this is actually a reintroduction of a bill that never went anywhere back in 2019, but it’s hoped that the drastic rise of bots and scalping in the months since the pandemic started will lead to greater support this time around.
The Stopping Grinch Bots Act has the support of groups like Consumer Reports, Consumer Federation of America and the National Consumer League. Its ties to Christmas are odd, as is the bill’s focus on families and kids, with Schumer saying “The average holiday shopper is unable to compete with the light speed of the all-too-common Grinch bot and are then held at ransom by scalpers and third-party resellers when trying to buy holiday presents.”
Representative Paul Tonko, Senator Richard Blumenthal, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Ben Ray Luján announced the bill on November 29, which aims to “crack down on cyber Grinches using ‘bot’ technology to quickly buy up whole inventories of popular holiday toys and resell them to parents at higher prices.”
This isn’t the first time Democrat lawmakers have tried this; as PC Mag point out, this is actually a reintroduction of a bill that never went anywhere back in 2019, but it’s hoped that the drastic rise of bots and scalping in the months since the pandemic started will lead to greater support this time around.
The Stopping Grinch Bots Act has the support of groups like Consumer Reports, Consumer Federation of America and the National Consumer League. Its ties to Christmas are odd, as is the bill’s focus on families and kids, with Schumer saying “The average holiday shopper is unable to compete with the light speed of the all-too-common Grinch bot and are then held at ransom by scalpers and third-party resellers when trying to buy holiday presents.”
