[rckt]

Not sure how is this illegal. It’s like saying that listening to a song that is played anywhere, but your paid service is illegal.

Anything public and online is accesible. These guys just motivated a bunch of other people to build more tools to fuck with paywalls.

[toader]

If you created software and sold a license for it, and I pirated it, would that be acceptable? They create a product, set the price, you choose to pay or not.

[rckt]

It's a bit different in practice with media. You can hear/read/see it anywhere. You can read someone's newspaper in the public transport or listen to a song in a cafeteria or watch something at your friend's house. Yes, somebody paid for it anyway, but there's no way to control the following spread of it.

[toader]

Sure, if you hear or see something in a public space, but don't you agree that deliberately bypassing their means of protecting their IP is theft?

[rckt]

It's debatable in every aspect. Internet - is partly public, so it's not something they couldn't expect - that somebody will try to read their articles avoiding the paywall. I personally support on a monthly basis the media that I definitely want to exist. The others... well, they also probably have their audience. I don;t know the economy of the whole thing, but probably in the end everyone gets their audience/support group.

[toader]

> "It's debatable in every aspect" -- A business creates a product. They offer the product to consumers for a price. If you take the product without paying, you are stealing. Seems straightforward to me.

[rckt]

If it’s a tool or something similar, yeah. Information is something you have very limited control over in public space. I guess it’s more a question of the business model rather than considering this stealing or not. The whole art domain is based on stealing and recycling.