The *point* is that you can use -U to specify arbitrary user-agent strings, and ...

		cubicle on July 17, 2012 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: The long and sordid history of the user-agent HTTP... The point is that you can use -U to specify arbitrary user-agent strings, and -E robots=off to ignore robots.txt. User-agent blocking is completely braindead. It does nothing at all. The fact that somebody in 2012 can possibly think it works is astounding to me.