Anti-Bot Protection Blocks Access to Criminal Appeal Case
Summary
BAILII (British and Irish Legal Information Institute) has deployed "Anubis," a proof-of-work anti-bot system, to block automated scraping of case documents. The system uses Hashcash-style computational challenges to increase the cost of mass scraping operations. JavaScript must be enabled and anti-tracking plugins disabled to access case content. The system targets AI companies and aggressive web scrapers while allowing legitimate user access.
What changed
BAILII has introduced Anubis, a proof-of-work-based anti-bot protection system, to protect its database of England and Wales court decisions from automated scraping. The system adds computational overhead that is negligible for individual users but becomes significant at scale for mass scraping operations. The implementation follows the Hashcash model originally proposed for reducing email spam. Websites affected by the deployment include BAILII's database of criminal, civil, and administrative court decisions.
Legal researchers, journalists, and automated legal information services that access BAILII will need to ensure their systems can handle JavaScript-based challenges and are not flagged as headless browsers. Organizations using scraping tools to access UK court decisions should review their access methods to ensure compatibility with the new protections. The technical approach suggests BAILII may continue to enhance fingerprinting capabilities to distinguish legitimate users from automated systems.
What to do next
- Monitor BAILII access policies for any changes to bot detection
- Ensure JavaScript is enabled when accessing BAILII case documents
- Disable anti-tracking browser extensions like JShelter when accessing BAILII
Archived snapshot
Apr 13, 2026GovPing captured this document from the original source. If the source has since changed or been removed, this is the text as it existed at that time.
Making sure you're not a bot!
Loading...
You are seeing this because the administrator of this website has set up Anubis to protect the server against the scourge of AI companies aggressively scraping websites. This can and does cause downtime for the websites, which makes their resources inaccessible for everyone.
Anubis is a compromise. Anubis uses a Proof-of-Work scheme in the vein of Hashcash, a proposed proof-of-work scheme for reducing email spam. The idea is that at individual scales the additional load is ignorable, but at mass scraper levels it adds up and makes scraping much more expensive.
Ultimately, this is a placeholder solution so that more time can be spent on fingerprinting and identifying headless browsers (EG: via how they do font rendering) so that the challenge proof of work page doesn't need to be presented to users that are much more likely to be legitimate.
Please note that Anubis requires the use of modern JavaScript features that plugins like JShelter will disable. Please disable JShelter or other such plugins for this domain.
Related changes
Get daily alerts for BAILII England & Wales Recent Decisions
Daily digest delivered to your inbox.
Free. Unsubscribe anytime.
About this page
Every important government, regulator, and court update from around the world. One place. Real-time. Free. Our mission
Source document text, dates, docket IDs, and authority are extracted directly from BAILII.
The summary, classification, recommended actions, deadlines, and penalty information are AI-generated from the original text and may contain errors. Always verify against the source document.
Classification
Who this affects
Taxonomy
Browse Categories
Get alerts for this source
We'll email you when BAILII England & Wales Recent Decisions publishes new changes.
Subscribed!
Optional. Filters your digest to exactly the updates that matter to you.