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Interesting. I posted a Chrome extension that did the same thing a while back (WSJ specific) and HN unanimously told me I was in the wrong, so I took it down.

• libria 11y ago
  Apparently having a few javascript frameworks under your belt can put you on the right side of the law.
  • manghoti 11y ago
    Now there's a stinging criticism of HN. Sorry habosa. You're not popular enough to do disruptive things.
    • ryandvm 11y ago
      Too true. I'd love to see what Hacker News comments would look like if all comments were anonymous for the first 6 hours...
      • patcon 11y ago
        Hm. That is an unbelievably charming idea for an experiment. Does HN ever do April Fools' day experiments? That would seem worth it for the introspective value alone...
      • malnourish 11y ago
        I think you should suggest this idea to the admins. I know PG stepped down but this seems like something he might have been in favor of.
      • bovermyer 11y ago
        I really like this idea.
      • Nemcue 11y ago
        I'll chime in with that it's an interesting idea, OTOH my gut feeling is that most people won't come back to read article comments after this initial 6 hours or so — hence you might as well essentially make the user handles anonymous altogether.
      • jeo1234 11y ago
        Just like that movie 'The Purge'.
• tokenizerrr 11y ago
  Wow, those comments are really odd. Every time a WSJ article is submitted here a comment contains a link to avoid the paywall, and every single time people are grateful.
  • bicknergseng 11y ago
    I can't help but wonder if that was a bit of brigading...
  • marcosdumay 11y ago
    Every time there is also somebody complaining that we shouldn't evade pay walls at all. But that's indeed a really odd set of comments. While there is some criticism on this thread here, it's way more down to Earth, nobody is talking about theft or anything.
    • schoen 11y ago
      Maybe people feel that people should only avoid paywalls in a random and haphazard way, and not a systematic way, or that people should avoid paywalls whenever they want but not make it convenient for the general public to do that? Is there a name for ethical notions related to whether people make a habit of something, or whether people help make something convenient?
      • sukilot 11y ago
        It is called "abusing a privilege" , and most elementary school children are taught not to take all the cookies from the jar just because they are invited to take one.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
• mahouse 11y ago
  It was your fault for listening to the comments. A golden rule is to never listen to the haters. Do what you think is best.
• waqf 11y ago
  In that post you didn't advertise that the "pay"wall can be circumvented just by Googling. It's possible HN perceives an ethical difference between that and a paywall where you actually have to pay.
  • Tenhundfeld 11y ago
    Agreed. I think the commenters in the other thread might not have understood how the extension worked. While the end result is the same, it feels like there's a difference between "circumvent a paywall" and "pretend I'm coming from Google search result". 1) Many people are ethically opposed to circumventing paywalls. 2) Many people are ethically opposed to paywalls treating certain traffic as special or different. As Jeremy says below: "What's not so great is creating an internet where if you use our Trusted Corporate Partner™ you're allowed to view a public webpage, and if you come from anywhere less privileged on the internet, you're not. That's not sustainable. Lest we fall into a vortex where you're only allowed to browse the public web by logging in through Facebook. I wouldn't want to be online in that world." I agree. I think the difference in responses from HN commenters is about which ethical evaluation people are focusing on, #1 or #2 above.
• eli 11y ago
  If it makes you feel better, I feel that both extensions are wrong. If you enjoy reading the WSJ, you should pay for it. They do some really great business reporting and it's not that expensive.
  • maratd 11y ago
    > I feel that both extensions are wrong. I feel that discriminating based on referrer is wrong. Or IP address. Or geographic location. Or user agent. More than that, discriminating based on those things is really flimsy. A website should provide the same content regardless of what browser you're using or where you're coming from.
    • eli 11y ago
      I'm not saying I think the WSJ's paywall is a good idea (I don't), but if they want to try to make money to support their (largely very good) journalism that way, I don't think it's very nice for someone else to publish a tool that automatically subverts the paywall for countless other users.
      • bdcravens 11y ago
        This tool saves the 3 seconds it takes to highlight the article title, 'Search Google for ...', and click the link in the search results.
        • eli 11y ago
          I don't follow. Would using the plugin be less acceptable if the paywall were harder to get around?
          • esrauch 11y ago
            Yes, definitely.
            • deleted 11y ago
• chavesn 11y ago
  I think you had a branding problem. Yours appeared to be an attack on a brand that is doing good work; this one seems more to be thwarting a sinister publisher practice. Responding to specific criticism from your comments: > It does feel excessive or cynical or something to install an actual app to work around a paywall. The WSJ organization says, you must pay us $28.99 a month for full access to this content. That's the value they've placed on their content, that's the price they are charging, and that's what people should pay. > The fact that they also make most if not all of the content available on a "complimentary" basis via Google suggests that they do value occasional visits from non-subscribers. > However if millions of non-subscribers were to install a paywall avoidance app and access the full content on a daily basis, this would probably violate the spirit of "occasional". WSJ certainly deserves to set whatever price on their work that they wish, and they also deserved to be compensated according to the value of that work. However, if the workaround is no more in violation of the "spirit of occasional [visits]" than this publisher practice is in violation of the "spirit" of web navigation. That spirit is that users should not be discriminated against based on their navigation source. Google search results should not be a representation of content that is not allowed to direct visitors. If WSJ wants to represent to Googlebot and Google visitors that the content is open, then it should be open to direct visitors as well. If I, a user, did nothing special to access the content, I should be able to pass on the link to a new set of users. This practice breaks that, and, I imagine almost invariably, users will not understand why.
  • mahouse 11y ago
    > WSJ certainly deserves to set whatever price on their work that they wish, and they also deserved to be compensated according to the value of that work. Don't you think we should also have the option to decide not to pay using these "dirty" tricks of the trade?
    • traek 11y ago
      I think we should (and do) have the option to decide not to pay and not consume the content.
      • 11y ago