I subscribe to a major newspaper. But I'm not going to subscribe to all major newspapers. The individual subscription model doesn't really fit a world where you can go to one site, and click links to articles from lots of different publications.
If they had a common subscription, where you pay one reasonable fee and they divide it up according to whose articles you read, I'd subscribe to that. Since they don't, I subscribe to one paper and do workarounds on the others. I feel this is ethical because if everyone did it, with a decently random distribution, then the newspapers would survive just fine. They'd make the same overall revenue as when everyone had one newspaper, showing up at their doorstep each morning.
There is a common subscription mostly overlooked. Your local library.
What most of the press subscription services make the mistake of is trying to simplify the billing process to the individual. Ripe opportunity for someone to come along and make an all in one paid subscription service at the county level and make it easy to log into all sites with your library membership.
The current one is per site model is way too much from too not be worth it.
> If they had a common subscription, where you pay one reasonable fee and they divide it up according to whose articles you read
So some extent that's what Apple News+ (included in Apple One) is. But it doesn't do multi region stuff I don't think, and misses some major publications.
Syndication used to be the way this idea worked. You'd buy your local paper that wrote about the cat stuck in the tree down the street, but it also republished national articles from AP. If you really cared about another locale, you might subscribe to two papers, which meant you might see the same national article twice.
That is basically the Apple News model. If you have Apple News (part of the Apple One bundle) you can get articles from a number of publishers that would normally require a separate prescription. I’m not sure if the publishers really like this model but so far they seem to be willing to play along.
This is also quickly happening with social media now.
Twitter $8, FB $12 (web) / $15 ios)
You're asking for the cable tv model where they aggregate premium channels, imho that doesn't work either... you end up paying for a lot of stuff that you're not interested in.
How about getting a paid membership for certain higher education institutions’ libraries, which will give you access to not only books, but also a plethora of periodicals. And that will be fully legal and ethical.
I’d be more willing to subscribe if publications didn’t pull the dark pattern of making signing up fast and easy, but then requiring a call to a rep to cancel.
I used to subscribe to the nytimes but a few years ago I needed a break from news. My plan was to come back in 6-12 months, but they made me wait on the phone for 25 mins for something that should have taken a couple of minutes on their site. I cancelled and never went back.
Move to the Netherlands. The medium used to sign up, should be available to cancel. Cancellation can't be harder than signing up, and (barring a few exceptions), you can't have an autorenew period of longer than a month, after an initial year.
These may actually be EU rules BTW, haven't checked.
This website almost succeed every time I run out of my tricks, like:
1) ESC to interrupt the page load
2) quickly hit "view mode" before the wall appears
3) add a "." behind the .com, so like .com./
4) visit in incognito window when the tokens run out (e.g. Medium)
5) Check Google cache of this page, (you can quickly add cache: URL to visit the cache page)
6) Check archive.org cache of some lost pages
7) maybe some extensions but I seldom use them nowadays
8) before, there are some cool sites like, sorry I forgot the names, all stopped working, those websites can remove paypall
What about Internet Archive wayback machine archive?
Is deleting your cookies legal? How about spoofing your user-agent?
How about a browser plugin that automates what OP describes?
In the case of caches like Google, Internet Archive, or `archive.today` (same thing as `archive.ph`)... probably, in the USA? If it winds up in court, we will find out, eventually.
Simply reading anything on the web technically involves "making a copy" already, which is one reason it gets and has remained somewhat confusing and complex to determine what is or is not legal with regard to copying web content. You can't simply say "making a copy is not allowed".
Archive.ph et al is run by a russian fellow so probably the third one, especially now that Russia doesn't seem to care about something like this at all
> I'm not sure of how it works (does it subscribed to them all?) but https://archive.ph/ is a good way to see the content in those cases.
I think for search engine crawlers there are versions without a paywall so these articles can get fully indexed. Archive.ph, and similar services, might get the full content this way somehow. But I am just guessing.
you're spot on, this is exactly how sites like archive.org, archive.ph, or even if you click on "view cached version" on Google get the non-paywalled versions.
I stumbled upon a link to an article with an interesting headline. I would like to read it, so I click the link, but there's a paywall. I have no idea what site that even is. This is the first and probably last time I'm seeing it. No way it gets a single cent from me. This just can't work when there are so many news websites competing for subscriptions.
Yes, archive.ph works most of the time, can't recommend it enough.
> But really, if you are regularly reading content on a site you should subscribe to support the journalists employed there
I'd go further than your statement: I try not to read paywalled contents. Actually I don't get all these workarounds about paywalls. I'm like "they don't want me to read it? I'm not going to read it then".
> But really, if you are regularly reading content on a site you should subscribe to support the journalists employed there.
While there are some paywalled websites that allow you to read _n_ articles per period for "free", there are many that don't. How do I know in this case whether it's worth the cost?
There are also times where I'll see a link to something behind a paywall with an interesting headline (frequently on HN), but from a publication I don't regularly read, so have no intention of a subscription. It would be nice in this case to be able to pay a one-time, small contribution.
Worth stating I don't disagree necessarily with the sentiment, there are just a few "edge cases" that make it impractical.
bloomberg.com for instance, hides pay walled lines in empty <div>s.
the other method is to disable javascript and cookies (works on nytimes.com), or press ESC key to stop page loading before paywall kicks in (works on telegraph.co.uk) :)
Usually on these sites, there'll be an `overflow: hidden` element that's holding all the content. If you can find and disable that CSS line, it'll work as normal. Or just save it to the Wayback Machine and read it through that.
I am going to add this to the post if that is alright. Please let me know if I shouldn't cite your HN username on the post. You can reply here and I'll see it. Thank you, this is super helpful.
In the case of Washington Post it just has a "position: fixed" style on the <body> element. That's usually the case with most of these scroll locking sites, one of the root parent elements will have some CSS style that you can click off.
What I find annoying about paywalled sites is that they provide the full content to Google. And Google is OK with indexing the full content, even though it is not available on the internet, and even though they explicitly forbid the practice of showing different content to a search engine from what is available publicly.
Paywalled sites are just fine, but they are not part of the open Internet, and should not pretend to be.
Yeah, 100% agree with this. It's like these sites want to have their cake and eat it, and both get the traffic the 'open web' provides while not having to actually share any of their work there.
It's like if you needed an app to view a page, yet Google had all its content indexed. Why is that (rightly) seen as unreasonable while charging users for content you provide to bots for free isn't?
Sometimes the full content is available - but only if you navigate to it via a Google results page, and you don't have existing cookies implementing a "free article limit".
Can't speak for OP but I think I would be annoyed if I was paying a subscription and I found out I could get around it with a simple `.` because of developer incompetence.
Why would this work? I know FQDNs sometimes require specifying a period at the end, and browsers seem to accept it as well, but I wonder why this would affect some frameworks' displayed content. Normally a site would rely on a cookie to maintain logged-in status, and that shouldn't be affected by the request URL.
Maybe some backend concession to allow viewing the article on hostnames/uris that are meant for internal use, partner sharing sites, etc? Like an if/then that checks the origin hostname?
Readit News
I'm not sure of how it works (does it subscribed to them all?) but https://archive.ph/ is a good way to see the content in those cases.
But really, if you are regularly reading content on a site you should subscribe to support the journalists employed there.
If they had a common subscription, where you pay one reasonable fee and they divide it up according to whose articles you read, I'd subscribe to that. Since they don't, I subscribe to one paper and do workarounds on the others. I feel this is ethical because if everyone did it, with a decently random distribution, then the newspapers would survive just fine. They'd make the same overall revenue as when everyone had one newspaper, showing up at their doorstep each morning.
What most of the press subscription services make the mistake of is trying to simplify the billing process to the individual. Ripe opportunity for someone to come along and make an all in one paid subscription service at the county level and make it easy to log into all sites with your library membership.
The current one is per site model is way too much from too not be worth it.
So some extent that's what Apple News+ (included in Apple One) is. But it doesn't do multi region stuff I don't think, and misses some major publications.
Deleted Comment
Twitter $8, FB $12 (web) / $15 ios)
You're asking for the cable tv model where they aggregate premium channels, imho that doesn't work either... you end up paying for a lot of stuff that you're not interested in.
I used to subscribe to the nytimes but a few years ago I needed a break from news. My plan was to come back in 6-12 months, but they made me wait on the phone for 25 mins for something that should have taken a couple of minutes on their site. I cancelled and never went back.
These may actually be EU rules BTW, haven't checked.
"May I ask why you want to cancel your account today?"
"No, you may not."
For some insane reason they ALL phrase the question this way, enabling this little grammatical gem of a response. Enjoy.
This website almost succeed every time I run out of my tricks, like:
1) ESC to interrupt the page load 2) quickly hit "view mode" before the wall appears 3) add a "." behind the .com, so like .com./ 4) visit in incognito window when the tokens run out (e.g. Medium) 5) Check Google cache of this page, (you can quickly add cache: URL to visit the cache page) 6) Check archive.org cache of some lost pages 7) maybe some extensions but I seldom use them nowadays 8) before, there are some cool sites like, sorry I forgot the names, all stopped working, those websites can remove paypall
9) console tricks though I dunno.
- Is it fair use because it's "archiving" the web?
- Is it because it's on the open web and it's public domain?
- Or is it illegal, and people do it because they can ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Is Google cache legal?
What about Internet Archive wayback machine archive?
Is deleting your cookies legal? How about spoofing your user-agent?
How about a browser plugin that automates what OP describes?
In the case of caches like Google, Internet Archive, or `archive.today` (same thing as `archive.ph`)... probably, in the USA? If it winds up in court, we will find out, eventually.
Simply reading anything on the web technically involves "making a copy" already, which is one reason it gets and has remained somewhat confusing and complex to determine what is or is not legal with regard to copying web content. You can't simply say "making a copy is not allowed".
I think for search engine crawlers there are versions without a paywall so these articles can get fully indexed. Archive.ph, and similar services, might get the full content this way somehow. But I am just guessing.
https://searchengineland.com/google-no-longer-recommends-usi...
https://blog.archive.today/post/678202832257794048/why-cant-...
While pretending to be GoogleBot used to get you full articles (or grabbing them from cache) this doesn't seem to be the case for some sites anymore.
They just give the first part of the article without the paywall, as that's usually enough for SEO purposes.
Deleted Comment
Yes, archive.ph works most of the time, can't recommend it enough.
I'd go further than your statement: I try not to read paywalled contents. Actually I don't get all these workarounds about paywalls. I'm like "they don't want me to read it? I'm not going to read it then".
While there are some paywalled websites that allow you to read _n_ articles per period for "free", there are many that don't. How do I know in this case whether it's worth the cost?
There are also times where I'll see a link to something behind a paywall with an interesting headline (frequently on HN), but from a publication I don't regularly read, so have no intention of a subscription. It would be nice in this case to be able to pay a one-time, small contribution.
Worth stating I don't disagree necessarily with the sentiment, there are just a few "edge cases" that make it impractical.
bloomberg.com for instance, hides pay walled lines in empty <div>s.
the other method is to disable javascript and cookies (works on nytimes.com), or press ESC key to stop page loading before paywall kicks in (works on telegraph.co.uk) :)
* { overflow: visible !important; }
Paywalled sites are just fine, but they are not part of the open Internet, and should not pretend to be.
It's like if you needed an app to view a page, yet Google had all its content indexed. Why is that (rightly) seen as unreasonable while charging users for content you provide to bots for free isn't?
This isn’t true. This paywall treatment is something they do allow and have worked to accommodate.
https://youtu.be/QHtnfOgp65Q
Google could easily add an option to filter out paywalled content but that would reduce clicks.
Not sure why this 'hack' is on the front-page.
No idea how it works but it looks like actual content is loaded separately once the gates are open?
https://site.com./1235/article
Those behind Cloudflare don't seem to be vulnerable to this though.
I've emailed the sites I've found where this works and none of them have fixed it after a year.
Why?
Guess it's a feature then and not a bug.