[geysersam]

Why is that relevant? They've created their content - if they want to share it with a search engine that's none of your business.

The technology does not allow them to do this without sharing it with you as well. But that is ethically irrelevant.

(Of course, we also deserve a good search engine allowing us to remove paywalled sites and seo spam from our results.)

[vehemenz]

Publishers are subverting users' reasonable expectations that the information they search and receive hits for on Google is publicly accessible—why else would it appear in search?

It's actually everyone's business because this creates a web that is less usable for everyone. If publishers were willing to commit and make their paid content server-side for customers only, they would have a stronger case against infringers.

[geysersam]

That's just your definition of "reasonable".

They provide users with an expectation of what information they will receive if they pay for the content.

The fact that this "glimpse" of the content pollutes your web searches is a search engine problem.

It would be trivial to filter sites with paywalled content. But Google refuses to let you do that. Hope someone else will come along and help with that.

[vorpalhex]

It's the search engines definition of reasonable. Don't like it? Don't let the search engine get to the content.

[kube-system]

Since when are Google results 100% clearnet? This has never been the case, ever. Search "login" in Google and you'll get a lot of content that is not publicly accessible.

[vorpalhex]

They are serving different content to Google than users, and are then upset the version they served Google is available to users.

[gamacodre]

What? Those login pages are publicly accessible in their entirety.

[vorpalhex]

"FREE VACATIONS! (you have to sit through a timeshare presentation and there are catches"

We widely regard the above as unethical.

Adding content to a search engine literally says "you can come read this content!". That is the purpose of search engines. Even Google penalizes paywall behavior and will downrank them - which forces the paywall people to get more clever.

Sorry but don't abuse search engines and users to sell your content. Buy ads like a big boy.

[geysersam]

They're doing something bad - so it's okay to steal their stuff. Did I get that right?

[vorpalhex]

They are being gamed by their own game. Nobody took their content - they submitted it to search engines and are upset the search engine provides a cached copy.

If they don't like it they can not submit to search engines.

[geysersam]

> nobody took their content

According to the law, someone did.

Just because something's available on request from a server does not mean it's up for grabs.

[vorpalhex]

> Just because something's available on request from a server does not mean it's up for grabs.

When you give the content out for free to the indexer, you have given a copy to the world. Google search is not your advertising machine - you can pay for that priviledge if you would care for it.

[abbusfoflouotne]

I wouldn't say it is necessarily immature to use a paywall as opposed to ads. I for one sometimes prefer paying for a site just so i dont have to see ads.

Though I do agree, the bait and switch aspect of finessing seo and such leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Glad google penalizes such behavior