They may do that ('though requesting a single article works fine), but it's not ...

icebraining on July 15, 2012 | parent | context | favorite | on: The long and sordid history of the user-agent HTTP...

They may do that ('though requesting a single article works fine), but it's not very smart. Throttling heavy users - possibly returning 429 with a link to the download pages - would make much more sense. It's not like wget users can't change their UA.