Bot Verification Page Blocks Access to Case EWCA/Crim/2026/477
Summary
BAILII deployed Anubis, a proof-of-work anti-bot system, to protect server resources against AI web scraping. The system presents a JavaScript-based challenge to visitors before granting access to case content. The underlying case (EWCA/Crim/2026/477) is inaccessible behind the verification wall.
What changed
BAILII, the database of England and Wales judicial decisions, implemented an anti-bot protection mechanism (Anubis) that presents a proof-of-work challenge to all visitors. This applies to all case pages hosted on bailii.org.
Users attempting to access case EWCA/Crim/2026/477 via automated means or browsers with certain security plugins enabled will be blocked from viewing the case content until the JavaScript challenge is completed. Legal professionals and researchers relying on automated retrieval workflows should note the technical barrier.
Archived snapshot
Apr 21, 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!
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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.
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