Paywall bypass

[Onkel Neal]

Not that my reasoning means much or is a good argument for bypassing paywalls, but here goes:

I agree bypassing a paywall is theft of content. If these content providers would stop showing up in my Google newsfeed, I wouldn't bother. I can tell how you much I go to the NY Times or Wash post to seek out news - 0% So, if they would stay on their side of the fence, so will I.

And

Some of the news outlets like New Yorker, the Atlantic, NYT, etc. have been aggressively pumping out slanted and factually inaccurate information. I consider it an assault on my understanding of the world around me when I see a headline in my Google news feed that seems to be wildly false, and to get the context and confirm the basis for the article, I will hop the paywall and check.

And

I've had my fill of preachy liberal news outlets telling me that straight white men are the world's number 1 problem so f 'em. I'm gonna live up to my reputation. If a tranny friendly writer wants to bash JK Rowling, then I'll bust that paywall.

and finally

I finished a book by one of my favorite authors while listening to a song by one of my favorite singers the other day, explaining how "the poor" should be assisted and supported and excused for their issues... then I realized I needed to stop fighting it and go along. The Washington Post pays their writers a heap ton more than my dwindling pension pays me so, ok, thank you wealthy liberal writers, I don't mind if I do.

Not claiming that excuses paywall theft, just my thinking...

[MaDef]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

What I meant by paywalls are not an effective security measure. Is they are simply not considered a security measure.

The biggest issue with using JavaScript is it could insert malicious code and that will directly affect your computer. What’s illegal about me preventing a source from downloading script to my PC?

Legal issues over articles arise from copywrite laws. Such as copy & pasting articles regardless if it’s free or not even if you acknowledge the source or not.

Paywalls are akin to ticket booths in the real world, you are paying to access the venue, just like a cover charge to enter a bar, a fair, or an amusement park, it doesn't become "theft" or "copyright infringement" until you DL content. I would think bypassing paywalls would fall along the lines of trespassing, right to privacy and/or "theft" of services. In the "real world" that is considered unacceptable behavior, on the internet, not so much. I'm just curious as to why.

Onkel Neal has an interesting justification, I don't know if I agree with it, but I do understand his reasoning. It could be my frustration with stupid isn't quite as high as his.

[Skybird]

A paywall that used for exmaple cookies or Javascripts on my systemposes to be a paywall by additionally implementing itself in a way that now violates MY RIGHTS if I obey the advertised claime dinetion (of being a paywall). Becasue such a paywall only works if I forfeit on my freedom to delete cookies or not use Javascript on my won system as I see fit. And that is why in my view this paywall, by this nature if works, is so to speak a violation, an illegal irregularity itself.

Der Tagespiegel for exmaple is like this. It has a simple paywall for some articles that easily gets avoided by archive.today.

Then there is the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and that is a different callibre. Their paywall cannot be avoided, at least not by me and my means, nor do i put any effort into it. If they make an article unaccessible (what they sometimes do after leaving it open for the first 12-48 hours after release), then thats it. However, the method of making stuff locked up with delay is kind of baiting, as is criticised in the essay I linked to. Here is however a paywall that seems to not work by just cookies or javascripts, therefore its existence does not collide with my own rights to do with and on my computer as I want. So i have no claim of "self defence" to make, and therefore I accept things as they are and leave them alone. I was paying subscriber to them for some months, btw. But I then realised that it was not worth it for me, although I think its one of the best newspapers left in Europe.

If a newspaper is serious about locking content, it certainly has ways and knowledge to make sure it works and then it will not chose cookies or Javascript that the owner of the PC is exected to not touch although it is his property. Like Rockstar, I always have Java and Javascript turned off, and automatically delete cookies - already hand-picked for only y very few websites - every time I close the browser.

Plus I have adware and spyware blockers on duty.

The more comfortable it is to handle a PC and access all the stuff on the web easily, the more open and thus unsafe the system is.

[Onkel Neal]

Found they have a Chrome extension, makes it one click easy now

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d...ipbia?hl=en-US