[ctrl_freak]

If anyone's looking for another workaround, the article actually hints at the solution: Facebook's l.php redirect that it uses when you click on a link shared through the platform. It functions similarly to the Google redirect, and you don't even need a Facebook account for it to work.

E.g. https://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/article...

[azag0]

How come this isn't culturally perceived in the same way as not paying for software or movies or music? I've read various reasons why people don't want to pay. That's fine. But then simply don't read it.

[ctrl_freak]

The reason I posted the workaround is because I feel like the publisher is trying to have their cake and eat it too. In other words, they enjoy the publicity they get from having their articles shared on Google, Facebook, Hacker News, but these sites usually don't want to feature articles that require their users to pay, so WSJ sets up a soft paywall that lets some of these users view the article for free.

But of course that becomes a bit of a blurry moral line. If I start browsing Google News in the hopes of stumbling upon a WSJ article so I can read it for free, is that immoral? What about if I google the headline of an article I'm interested in? Automatically setting my referer to facebook.com whenever I visit wsj.com probably goes too far, but then where do you draw the line?

Anyway, I feel very strongly that either everyone from HN should be able to freely read an article shared here, or no one. If no one can read it, then the link shouldn't be allowed here.

[paulddraper]

> everyone from HN should be able to freely read an article shared here, or no one. If no one can read it, then the link shouldn't be allowed here.

Then we'll have the laments: oh the ads, the humanity; or, why does all journalism suck?

[tracker1]

I'm fine with their paywall... however, they should no longer come up on google news... their rules have been quite clear, and why google is letting WSJ skate on the issue is beyond me.

[rhaps0dy]

> How come this isn't culturally perceived in the same way as not paying for software or movies or music?

Perhaps it is? I've almost never had anyone remark that I was doing something bad when not paying for a software or movie or music.

[tonfa]

Also there are still countries where downloading copyrighted materials is not illegal (distributing it usually is, though).

[hacknat]

Well, hear it now. I'm judging you.

[kaspiCZ]

Let's pretend you developed a piece of software you want to sell. People download it without paying you. What do you do in that case?

[chillingeffect]

I recognize that review comes from two sources, direct through sales and indirect, through discovery. So I try to make sure discovery reaches people with the best material and spend the most money to move the most people, persuading them to pay along the path of least resistance....

...which is exactly what the WSJ has been doing.

[kofejnik]

it's a logical fallacy to assume that people who downloaded your work would have discovered it and actually paid for it if there was no free option

a lot of artists would PAY to get millions of downloads/views

[abiox]

> it's a logical fallacy to assume that people who downloaded your work would have discovered it and actually paid for it if there was no free option

it's a "logical fallacy" to assume they wouldn't

[gaius]

Let me know when you can pay rent or buy groceries with retweets.

[vonklaus]

it's unclear if you do not realize thousands of people make their living full-time as promoters on social media. They literally pay rent with money that was paid to them proportionate to their retweets. Or if this was hyperbole to underscore your disagreement with a freemium business model

[hacknat]

You mean pirated? It's a logical fallacy to assume that your otherwise non-discovery makes your decision moral.

[beefield]

Rethink my business model?

[kuschku]

Are you willing to pay each month

    SPIEGEL:  $  9.40
    FAZ:      $ 44.90
    WSJ:      $ 30.85
    Guardian: $  6.99
    KN:       $ 19.99
    
    -----------------
    Total     $112.13

just to read a handful of articles per newspaper?

I’m sorry, I’m a student, I don’t even have Netflix because that’s too expensive.

[beejiu]

You can often loan out movies, music, books and sometimes software from a local library, free of charge. (At least in the UK.) It was also common to loan a friend a CD back when CDs were a thing. Perhaps it is more pervasive now, but I don't think it is fair to say that everybody who consumes media pays for it.

[abtinf]

> the Journal also started letting people read for free links that are shared on social media by subscribers and staffers.

Because the publisher explicitly allows it.

[azag0]

No. The publisher wants their subscribers to be able to share the stuff they pay for with other people. If you use that feature to read for free any content they publish, you misuse it. Now, I am very much against any DRM, I don't even really believe that intellectual property should be protected by law, but I believe that content creators have legitimate (but not necessarily legal) right to be paid for their content. (If they want to have legally enforceable income, they need to find different schemes.) If you avoid paying, you're denying them that right. Again, I don't think this should be covered by law, but I also don't think it's fair.

[Touche]

This argument comes up often but it's not convincing. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You can't distribute your content on a public (free) medium and also control how people consume that content. If you want control of how people use a thing, the internet is the worst possible choice.

It's really simple, if you want to put your content behind a paywall, then put it behind a paywall. Don't leave a backdoor open and then complain when people use that door.

[kofejnik]

do you claim to know the exact intent of other people, and are prepared to judge some other people based on sharing your view and adhering to it exactly?

[dzhiurgis]

The publishers want their subscribers to ADVERTISE the stuff they they pay for.

By definition sharing means giving it away for free.

[briandear]

Don't believe IP should be protected? So every single author out there should not get paid? If their content isn't protected, they it's illogical to suggest they should also get paid. Anyone could reproduce that content and redistribute it. That's ludicrous. Film crews ought not be paid? Because if they can't sell their work, then what are they supposed to eat while making movies? Without IP protection, you no longer have new medicines. If the answer is "the government," then the question is -- where does the tax money come from to pay for it? If you wiped out IP law, you'd destroy a significant portion of the economy. The only people that would make any money would be those that control land or raw materials. Innovation would disappear.

[azag0]

Obviously, this is too complex a problem to discuss here, so I'll make only a few points: (1) It isn't really relevant for my point about paying the publishers. If anything, IP protection makes my point stronger. (2) I'm not suggesting to abolish IP protection, because I'm not sure I'm right. That's why I said I believe IP protection is not needed. I know I cannot argue my opinion sufficiently. (3) My biggest issue with IP protection is that since there is no unambiguous definition of what IP is, all IP laws are necessarily too restrictive. Leading e.g. to the current craziness with patents. (4) Film crews out to be paid. There are different models of financing than copyright. Music industry got pretty far with the transition. (5) As for drugs, the governments should announce which drugs are needed, and when companies deliver such drugs, they should get a one-time payment. In present language, the governments would buy the copyright from the companies and release the recipes to public domain. It would be financed from health insurance.

Etc, etc. But again, I know there are holes in my reasoning.

[xapata]

> drugs ... one time payment

That'd have to be an incredibly large one-time payment. And how would we know how much to pay?

[monochromatic]

Everything on the web used to be free. We got used to that.

[mirimir]

I'd be happy to pay, under these conditions: 1) payment per article, at prices comparable to aggregate ad income; and 2) payments accepted via Bitcoin, or other methods which can be anonymized.

[sah2ed]

> 1) payment per article, at prices comparable to aggregate ad income;

Unfortunately, this kind of micropayment will not work for most people and perhaps more importantly will lead to less revenue for the publisher.

Clary Shirky has written about why micropayments [0] is the wrong model for consuming content more than a decade ago.

[0] http://shirky.com/writings/fame_vs_fortune.html

[mirimir]

Well, ads are currently placed through a micropayment system. And there's no reason that customers would need to make individual decisions, any more than advertisers do.

[mason55]

Then just wait 18 hours for you $0.03 transaction to be confirmed so you can read the article.

[mirimir]

No, not that way. Put 100 USD worth in an account, for instant debit.

[sneak]

If they don't want people to read for free, the WSJ should simply not serve it.

We're free to send them any Referer headers we wish... in a request. It's up to them to reply however they wish.

[maxerickson]

Which culture are you talking about? Lots (lots!) of people view and collect media without paying for it.

[k_lander]

i would be perfectly fine with this. just give me a way to exclude wsj from my newsfeed and search results without me having to install a trusted browser extension

[jdavis703]

This is the equivalent of reading a magazine in the bookstore and not buying it. It would be different if you walked out the store without paying.

[dopamean]

I don't they're the same at all. In your example if you walk out of the store with the magazine the store has to cover the cost of the magazine. If you stay in the store and read it then the content provider didn't get paid for someone consuming their content however the magazine is still there. The store could still sell it.

The l.php script basically allows someone to read the magazine without paying for it. The only entity that loses something in that situation is the content provider.

[clarry]

> The only entity that loses something in that situation is the content provider.

What do they lose?

[tedmiston]

Because there is no Spotify or Netflix for written content.

[tomjen3]

It is, music, software and movies are pirated illegally too.

[icebraining]

Can you pirate legally? Sounds like a pleonasm.

[zeamaize]

Why the hell should I pay for poor journalism that is riddled with ads?

There is a reason I subscribe to Netflix but not Hulu.

[todd3834]

Hulu has an ad free plan

[mynameisvlad]

They really should have been more vocal in announcing its release. I find that a lot of people still believe the only available options are ad-supported.

I had only discovered it when I wanted to resubscribe for other reasons; I probably would have done it earlier if I had known the option was available.

[bilkow]

Does it work by checking the referrer? Maybe you can workaround by configuring a browser add-on (like RefControl) to just send facebook.com as a referrer while on WSJ.

[Jgrubb]

I believe this was discussed in one of the last threads as being potentially against some dumbass 25 year old law.

[the8472]

Not everyone is american

[melling]

I've paid for the WSJ for over 15 years. There's nothing wrong with actually paying for good content. That business model doesn't need to go away.

[hendersoon]

I completely agree. The real problem is pricing.

The difference between absolutely free like most content on the internet and the WSJ standard monthly rate of $33/month is truly enormous. The NYT, which I also feel is priced too high, is $15/month.

Remember Netflix costs $10/month-- that's the value proposition they need to compete against.

These content producers should charge $5/month, with no scummy "special introductory offers" where you just _know_ they're going to raise the price and screw you in a couple months. At that price I would subscribe to everything I read.

[cobookman]

If they lower the price they might not get more subscribers. So they are pricing it to maximize revenue.

[hnbroseph]

do other countries have laws?

[Retr0spectrum]

The only downside with this is that facebook gets a small amount of data about your browsing habbits.

[LeifCarrotson]

It's the same data that Google was getting.

Also, I think Facebook (and Twitter, and others) already have a Share button on all WSJ articles that would inform them when you visit that page.

[wslh]

You can create a fake account.

[bitexploder]

It still helps them if it all aggregates under one account.

[mynameisvlad]

Then create a fake account every week. On a fresh VPN/Tor connection so it's not tied to your IP. Better use a different browser too so it's not fingerprinted [0]. Make sure you disable those sharing links and the JS that loads them in.

Let's be real, they get data about you in a million ways. It'll all be aggregated somehow, and I wouldn't be surprised if they did aggregate in other ways like IP/browser, and those sharing links definitely leave cookies behind.

[0]: https://panopticlick.eff.org/

[Neliquat]

Just to read an article from wsj? No thanks.

[ikeboy]

I would give you HN gold if it existed (now we just need a bookmarklet/extension to automate this).

Do we know that this will still work on Monday? Maybe this will also be closed and you'll need a special link?

[oconnore]

Instead of buying internet points for someone who figured out a little hack to access journalism, maybe you could instead pay for journalism?

[Taek]

A noble thought. My problem comes not from the fact that I don't want to pay but rather from the fact that it's super annoying.

What if my browser could just say "article will be 25 cents?" and I could say y/n? But instead, I have to sign up for a service, hand over my credit card, blah blah, and now you've wasted enough of my time that it was worth just me stealing it.

I'm pretty convinced it's just aUX thing.

[sethhochberg]

See, I look at this the exact opposite way - if I have to decide whether each individual article is worth paying for, I'm probably not going to read any articles. Its much easier for me to pay $10 a month and know that I can, with zero friction, read whatever article I want from the publications I respect. We're talking about the Wall Street Journal here; odds that they're going to only occasionally publish something I'm interested in are pretty low - I'm either interested in subscribing or I'm not.

[lazaroclapp]

The problem is, assuming you read 20 or so online newspapers at least occasionally, this has you keeping $200 a month of subscriptions, of which in most cases you will read a 2 or 3 articles a year because they ended up HN news or some other news aggregator you actually use.

This is even true if you only subscribe to relatively reputable traditional news sources, btw. Here are 12 that individually are worth it and most informed individuals would be served by reading on occasion, but few people would want to have individual subscriptions to them: WSJ, NYT, WaPo, The Economist, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Chicago Tribune, SF Chronicle, The Guardian, Le Monde, El País, Die Welt. Nevermind the fact that I do have subscriptions to 2 of those, and they compound the problem by serving annoying video ads even to subscribers.

Edit: A model that I would consider fair though (and the journals might not, I don't know their cost structure) is: 2-5 free articles a month without subscription of any sort and with unobtrusive ads, paid subscription if you read more articles a month from that particular journal. Another option is a "library" subscription model, in which you pay $20 or $30 a month, but get access to a broad catalog of newspapers (about what you would find at a large public library in print) and they get profits based on what you actually read. And yes, I have seen this as a startup idea, Netflix for news, but newspapers never seem to go for it wholeheartedly enough for it to be worthwhile to consumers, though.

[dustinmr]

Seems to me, as readers, we're less in need of 'Netflix for news' and more in need of either consolidation or decentralization in journalism.

I have much less brand loyalty now than say 10 years ago. I have less respect for both the WSJ and NYT than I did. I don't think their incentives line up with mine anymore, and it leaves me without a news source I trust the way I once trusted both of them.

A larger entity that doesn't need to worry as much about getting me to hit the clickbait would serve me better as a reader (and I'd then be more likely to subscribe). Or, if I could subscribe to individual reporters or small groups of them in some way (such as Dave Pell's style of content delivery, but more availability and let me pay them some how), it would also better serve me as a reader.

Instead we're stuck with a structure where they don't make enough money, and thus continue devaluing their brands, and we as readers don't have an easy way to know who we can trust to respect us as customers (no surprise video ads, unbiased reporting, etc). So I guess I'll stick with using sites like HN to aggregate the news for me, and stop clicking on the WSJ links. The brand no longer signals unbiased quality journalism to me.

[leereeves]

For me, subscriptions are a deal breaker. Whenever possible, I avoid signing up for a recurring fee for something I only use occasionally.

[cgriswald]

For me, the deal breaker is that even with a subscription I am usually saddled with consuming the content the way they want me to and they only want me to consume it that way so they can still advertise to me.

[manarth]

  Its much easier for me to pay $10 a month

WSJ is $32.99 (+tax) a month, for digital access. That's a little harder to justify if you only occasionally read their content.

[anotheryou]

So check the "automatically pay everything below 30 cents" setting in your browser payment add-on or subscribe to the advertised flatrate shared between publishing houses (like spotify).

[dflock]

The Brave web browser has this built in, more or less. You give it bitcoin and it does micropayments for content you read. You can set max amounts, etc...

[mirimir]

There's already a system for selling ad space, based on tracking data and real-time bidding. Why would it be so hard to use the same sort of system for paid access, replacing ad resellers with readers?

[Klathmon]

That is what Google Contributor once did, but was shut down recently to be completely re-thought from the ground up (and hopefully will be relaunching in the next few months) because:

1. Nobody used it

2. It didn't block ALL ads, just most (based on if you won or lost the bid)

3. There was a LOT of backlash against it because it was google and even though you can opt out of tracking nobody believes them.

4. The old "adblock is free" argument.

It used to be that you'd pay an amount between $1 and $15 per month and it would use that money to "bid" on ad spots like a normal advertiser would. If you won the bid, you'd see a picture, a pattern, or anything else you wanted in that spot. If you lost, you'd see another ad.

The fee split worked identically to a regular ad, so Google would take their cut, the site would take the rest. And any money not spent at the end of the month was refunded back to you (not rolled over, actually put back in your bank account).

[mirimir]

Yes, that was an interesting experiment.

But I'm arguing that publishers could simply sell per-article access. As an alternative to subscriptions. I used the current ad-brokerage system as an example, because it's so hugely cumbersome. But I'm not arguing that users should simply bid against advertisers.

[njloof]

I used it, but:

- it was poorly advertised (irony!); I only found out about it from a Google engineer that said, "This is probably the kind of thing you'd pay for"

- US only

[fovc]

Can't reply to taek, but https://blendle.com/ lets you pay per article. There's an HN sign up code somewhere but couldn't find it on my phone

[elcapitan]

This. Has been my solution for most "major news outlets with paywall" in German for quite some time now. It has a couple of English papers as well (could be better, though).

You can even get your money back when reading accidentally (guess that doesn't work 10 times in a row, but it's a good feature).

[amelius]

Imho, the solution should not involve a middleman. We don't want a single party gatekeeping our news.

[SturgeonsLaw]

I wouldn't want a single cent of my money going to that bottom feeder Rupert Murdoch

[Gargoyle]

Then don't read articles on a site he owns.

[noobermin]

It is a small conundrum, I don't particularly like Murdoch either, but his paper is well regarded and many important pieces have appeared there (like op-ed from public figures for example), and I miss out when I can't have access to WSJ articles.

I wish there were a way to buy access to individual articles .

[hacknat]

You are aware that you probably consume other valuable goods and services from companies whose CEOs are just as deplorable, but not as well publicized, right?

If you think a product is valuable, but you don't want to pay for it because you don't like the person selling it that makes you a retributive thief. You don't even have ideology to hide behind, you just don't like someone.

[wfunction]

Bookmarklet for Facebook:

  javascript:window.location="https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u="+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);

Bookmarklet for Google:

  javascript:window.location="https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&url="+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);

[dankohn1]

This is awesome. Just for folks who aren't clear how to create a bookmarklet:

Create a bookmark of any page, by going to a URL such as https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122878081364889613 (note that only the top part of the page loads) and enter Cmd (or Ctrl) D. Now Save the bookmark to your bookmark bar. Find the bookmark, right click, and replace the WSJ URL with the javascript URL in the parent post. Save and now test by clicking the bookmark in the bookmark bar. After a redirect through Facebook, the full WSJ article should display.

[sfritz]

I may be misunderstanding your instructions, but I think the intended use (in Chrome, at least) is to highlight the javascript and drag it to your bookmarks bar. This creates a bookmark that executes the javascript, which you can click to unblock the WSJ article you're currently viewing by redirecting the current page through Facebook.

Another useful bookmarklet for deleting annoying DOM elements:

  javascript:(function(){document.styleSheets[0].addRule(".highlighted_to_remove","background:red !important");var e=function(e){if(e.keyCode==27){i()}};document.addEventListener("keydown",e);var t=function(e){e.stopPropagation();this.classList.add("highlighted_to_remove");return false};var n=function(e){e.stopPropagation();this.classList.remove("highlighted_to_remove");return false};var r=function(e){this.parentNode.removeChild(this);i();e.preventDefault();e.stopPropagation();return false};var i=function(){var i=0;var s=document;while(s=document.body.getElementsByTagName("*").item(i++)){s.removeEventListener("mouseover",t);s.removeEventListener("mouseout",n);s.removeEventListener("click",r);s.classList.remove("highlighted_to_remove")}document.removeEventListener("keydown",e)};var s=0;var o=document;while(o=document.body.getElementsByTagName("*").item(s++)){o.addEventListener("mouseover",t);o.addEventListener("mouseout",n);o.addEventListener("click",r)}})()

[greglindahl]

Same thing for firefox. And you can right-click the bookmarklet to edit its properties and make a nice name.

[haaen]

How does this work, step by step?

[monochromatic]

Beautiful.

[7yagi]

It's working right now

[davedx]

Ah, the WSJ, hotbed of climate change denial. I don't click through to any of their articles anyway. I wish them well with their stupid paywall