> I'm pretty certain this is scrapers that are trying to workaround blocks on accessing original sites by hitting the Wayback Machine copy instead. Appalling behavior.

Appalling, yes. But also expected. I'm surprised they haven't been the target of scrapers for years. But sites putting their content behind login walls and other anti-bot mechanisms has certainly exacerbated this. But again, this isn't at all a surprising progression.

> we've also already seen some sites opt out of the Wayback Machine to prevent their content from being scraped via this alternative route.

To be fair, another big motivation was likely users on sites like HN using archive.org (and similar sites) to get around their paywalls. In fact, I'd be surprised if this wasn't a big motivator.

Again, it sucks, but it's not at all surprising to see it progress like this. I wouldn't be surprised to see similar blocks on other archive sites eventually.