4 ms·
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
by 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 agoI think we should (and do) have the option to decide not to pay and not consume the content.
- Karunamon 11y agoThat's an answer to a different question. If WSJ, an amoral business entity, decides to serve different content to Google users and different content to everyone else, then you're left answering a question about user intent. Personally, I don't think it's fair that WSJ simultaneously demands money for content but leaves open a loophole so they can get Google exposure, and then complain when people use said exposure. It smacks of wanting to have their cake and eat it too. The entire point of the Google link and the whole paywall circumvention is so they can get traffic to their site, right? This implies that getting people on their site is more valuable to them than locking their content behind a paywall. They could always serve only a summary to both Google and to nonsubscribers from other referrers, but this leads to people mentally filing them in the "useless link, never click" bucket along with Experts Exchange and other crappy content farms.
- ikeboy 11y agoActually, Google requires free article access from referrals to be included in Google News at all. (There are other ways, but I think that one was recommended.)
- chavesn 11y agoYes, that is what I am trying to say. Karunamon (above/below[1]) said it better than I did. The WSJ deserves to be compensated for their work if they ask to be (in other words, consumers should not "steal" the content), but my questions is whether they have actually asked for the payment. In my opinion, this tactic is no different than offering it for free but then demanding payment anyway. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9534392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9534392