Meh, for a lot of business models it makes a lot of sense. I wholeheartedly disagree with the sentiment, but that doesn't change the fact that deflecting automation tools/scraping is the best way to keep people coming to your site. If you're showing ads or pushing unique/paywalled data, it's probably well worth it to ensure that you've got scraping prevention. Those people need every dollar they can get, and if their power-users can circumvent them entirely it's considered a threat to their practice.