4 ms·

Okay, I know a lot of us just post this: https://outline.com/aqUgJ6 https://outline.com/aqUgJ6 What are the ethics of posting this? Did I prevent people from

Okay, I know a lot of us just post this: https://outline.com/aqUgJ6 https://outline.com/aqUgJ6 What are the ethics of posting this? Did I prevent people from paying for a paywall? Does the author expect to get paid from that? Or is medium just forcing me to sign up, and there is no money being exchanged? Should I not feel better about giving a way around a sign up? Even if its not monetary, am I depriving medium of value?

bilekas 7y ago
justice.gov does not have a paywall... Not yet at least. So not sure what you're talking about
- omarhaneef 7y ago
  But we are talking about longread here, not justice.gov. I think you are confused between this thread and the parallel thread on the same subject.
  - tingletech 7y ago
    for me the link is to medium; and I'm always able to just [x] the "paywall" and read it anyway on medium
    - Digit-Al 7y ago
      Same here. I get rather confused when people keep talking about being paywalled on medium. I can only assume their experience of the site is different, but I have no idea in what way, or why.
      - chews 7y ago
        After a certain number of reads of medium, you aren't allowed to read any article without giving them a social login.
        tingletech 7y ago
        must be a lot of reads. I've read enough that I get prompted for a social login, but never so much that I can't [x] out the prompt.
0xffff2 7y ago
I honestly can't understand how this is anything other than copyright infringing piracy. If I put the full text of every book on the New York Times bestseller list up on a website, surely I would, at the very least, be forced to take it down and no one would be particularly sympathetic to me. Why is this any different? Because the original medium is digital? Because it's technically easy to circumvent the paywall? I don't get it.
- bsder 7y ago
  > I honestly can't understand how this is anything other than copyright infringing piracy. The ethics are "If your article returns in Google, I should be able to read it." If I can't read it, it shouldn't appear on Google. Unfortunately, I can't enforce this, personally. So, I'm quite happy with these sites that bypass paywalls like these. When I find a site that has a paywall but doesn't show up in my Google search results, we can talk about ethics again.
  - tqi 7y ago
    > The ethics are "If your article returns in Google, I should be able to read it." If I can't read it, it shouldn't appear on Google. Why is that?
  - 0xffff2 7y ago
    What do you mean by "returns in Google"? If you simply mean that the article shows up in search results, I'm not sure how that's different from the books in my original example. Certainly you'll get links to books on the bestseller list for related search results.
    - wincy 7y ago
      The google user agent crawler is given the full text of the article, I believe. So the companies are trying to have to both ways, by providing the article wholly to the web crawler that indexes the page, but then expecting users to pay for it.

bilekas 7y ago

justice.gov does not have a paywall... Not yet at least. So not sure what you're talking about

omarhaneef 7y ago
But we are talking about longread here, not justice.gov. I think you are confused between this thread and the parallel thread on the same subject.
- tingletech 7y ago
  for me the link is to medium; and I'm always able to just [x] the "paywall" and read it anyway on medium
  - Digit-Al 7y ago
    Same here. I get rather confused when people keep talking about being paywalled on medium. I can only assume their experience of the site is different, but I have no idea in what way, or why.
    - chews 7y ago
      After a certain number of reads of medium, you aren't allowed to read any article without giving them a social login.
      - tingletech 7y ago
        must be a lot of reads. I've read enough that I get prompted for a social login, but never so much that I can't [x] out the prompt.

0xffff2 7y ago

I honestly can't understand how this is anything other than copyright infringing piracy. If I put the full text of every book on the New York Times bestseller list up on a website, surely I would, at the very least, be forced to take it down and no one would be particularly sympathetic to me. Why is this any different? Because the original medium is digital? Because it's technically easy to circumvent the paywall? I don't get it.

bsder 7y ago
> I honestly can't understand how this is anything other than copyright infringing piracy. The ethics are "If your article returns in Google, I should be able to read it." If I can't read it, it shouldn't appear on Google. Unfortunately, I can't enforce this, personally. So, I'm quite happy with these sites that bypass paywalls like these. When I find a site that has a paywall but doesn't show up in my Google search results, we can talk about ethics again.
- tqi 7y ago
  > The ethics are "If your article returns in Google, I should be able to read it." If I can't read it, it shouldn't appear on Google. Why is that?
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  What do you mean by "returns in Google"? If you simply mean that the article shows up in search results, I'm not sure how that's different from the books in my original example. Certainly you'll get links to books on the bestseller list for related search results.
  - wincy 7y ago
    The google user agent crawler is given the full text of the article, I believe. So the companies are trying to have to both ways, by providing the article wholly to the web crawler that indexes the page, but then expecting users to pay for it.