New York Times Paywall Goes Live, Loopholes Abound

RedEaredSlider writes "As the New York Times' new paywall went live this afternoon at 2 p.m., discussion of the move has made the natural transition to methods of bypassing it. As expected, a number of loopholes and hacks have appeared. One of the more notorious methods appeared almost instantly. Using a Twitter account named @FreeNYT, an anonymous user aggregated every article the newspaper posted to Twitter. The site caught The Times' notice and before long, The Times requested that Twitter suspend the account, arguing that it violated its trademark. Another loophole uses four lines of CSS and JavaScript. Canadian developer David Hayes managed to strip the Times' website of any mention of digital subscriptions in addition to getting past the paywall. The hack was released in the form of NYTClean, a bookmarklet easily added to web browsers." It's likely that the paywall is deliberately porous; as paywalls go, it's a relatively unrestrictive one. Readers referred from search or other sites are unlikely to notice a difference. Workarounds at least keep readers on their site.

Comments

Uh

[mikaelg]

I don't think they really care about workarounds. Most casual users wont bother with those but will buy a subscription if they feel like it's worth it. I wouldn't pay for NYT, but I sure could pay for a newspaper or a writer who I think is writing interestingly, informatively or studies the case. This is especially true on things like business and computer stuff, not so much everyday news.

Re:Value?

[welcher]

Uh, the value they are charging for is the reporting they do with a staff of about 2000 journalists. A lot of people value that and quite rightly so.

Re:Pay Hedge

[euri.ca]

Agreed, the price comparison the NYT used was "$15, less that the price of a martini in Manhattan," they aren't targeting people who are willing to twiddle with their browsers, they. (I tried to say as much on my 3 minutes on NPR this morning when they asked me about this)

NYT is a lap-dog

[tick-tock-atona]

The New York Times has been dead to me ever since Bill Keller, Executive Editor, admitted that he won't publish anything relating to the US govt. without their prior approval.

Incredibly sad behaviour for what used to be one of the leaders of the "Free Press". And thanks again, Wikileaks, for exposing another facet of the insidious corporate takeover of US democracy.