What is ds9?
ds9 is operated by Copyright Clearance Center and crawls websites to gather information about published content for copyright licensing and rights management purposes. This bot helps identify and track copyrighted materials across the web to facilitate proper licensing agreements between content owners and users. Agent Analytics can track when it visits your website.
Overview
| Operated By | Copyright Clearance Center |
| Source | Official Website |
| Expected To Follow Robots.txt | Yes |
| Insights Last Updated | August 11, 2026 |
Do you operate this agent? Contact us to suggest an update.
Category
Expected Behavior
ds9 usually returns to a small set of pages rather than crawling an entire site. Visits may follow an hourly, daily, or weekly schedule, while websites its clients do not monitor may never encounter it.
ds9's User Agent
| User Agent | ds9 2.000.ec2(+https://data.dss.sps.copyright.com/docs/user_agent.html) |
How To Block ds9 With Robots.txt
Add this rule to your robots.txt file to block ds9 from accessing your entire website, or use Automatic Robots.txt to block all intelligence gatherers at once. You can customize which pages are blocked by swapping out / for a different path.
User-agent: ds9 # https://knownagents.com/agents/ds9
Disallow: /Global Statistics for ds9
As of August 11, 2026, this data reflects agent visits measured across thousands of websites using Agent Analytics, combined with daily scans of the top 1000 websites and their robots.txt files.
Robots.txt Blocked Percentage
Country of Origin
Robots.txt Blocking Trend
0% of top websites block ds9 in their robots.txt files.
Overall Intelligence Gatherer Traffic
3.5% of all web traffic came from intelligence gatherers.
Top Visited Website Categories
The types of websites most frequently visited by ds9.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I Block ds9?
If you run ads, confirm ds9's purpose before blocking it. Some intelligence gatherers measure ad placements or evaluate pages for brand safety, and blocking those agents can interfere with advertising systems. If this one serves a different purpose, weigh any research visibility against sharing business or page-level data with third parties. Almost none of the top websites we track currently have robots.txt rules for ds9.
Does ds9 Follow Robots.txt Rules?
Yes. ds9 is expected to follow robots.txt directives, so a disallow rule is the appropriate first step. Automatic Robots.txt can add and maintain that rule, while Agent Analytics lets you verify whether ds9 respects it.
Does ds9 Access Private Content?
No special access. ds9 can read publicly available pages but cannot bypass authentication. Assume anything you publish openly may be collected.
Why Is ds9 Visiting My Website?
A client of Copyright Clearance Center may be gathering competitive intelligence, measuring advertisements, or evaluating content for brand safety. The pages requested reflect that client's objective.
How Can I Tell if ds9 Is Visiting My Website?
Agent Analytics tracks ds9 visits in real time alongside every other known AI agent, crawler, and scraper. You can also check your server logs for requests whose user-agent string contains "ds9". Look for repeated requests to the same small group of commercial or ad-supported pages. Because ds9 does not publish a verification method, any client can claim its identity and a log match is only a clue.