[randomdata]

It can only be a problem for the news agencies – and only if those users are a significant number to impact profitability. If those users don't matter, restricting their access doesn't matter. Who cares if someone who isn't helping your bottom line can't access the content you expect payment for? That’s the whole point of this – to keep out those who are not helping the news business.

Now, each successful entrance into an article via allowable referrer would come with an access token to allow future access absent of referral. When sharing in the small scale, the news agency can simply allow these links to be shared. But if the reach grows wide, suggesting that a major tech source has picked up the link and should be using their contractually settled upon authentication mechanism instead, then the token can be invalidated.

[Dylan16807]

These are the people trying to visit your website because of very specific interest. You should want their views a lot, not try to keep them out!

The access token plan is workable, though still causes annoying linking problems.

[randomdata]

> You should want their views a lot, not try to keep them out!

Views don't pay the bills. They only want viewers who are willing to pay to play (even if by proxy). C-18 ensures that payment is made, else user access is restricted by legal force. Which is the same outcome if it were done by technical force. They don't care about the restrictions on users who are eschewing payment in either case.

[Dylan16807]

More interested viewers are the ones that might pay money that's actually significant on a per-person basis. I think you have your hierarchy mixed up.

Making them leave and half give up, half come back via a paying search engine or social media site, is not going to be the most effective use of them.