A Craigslist user in Delaware published this tip on how to access The News Journal's website after you've exhausted your quota of free articles. The advice -- removing individual cookies -- is well known. But this is the first time I've seen readers promoting it so openly.
Is information like this circulating in your market? Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.
Is information like this circulating in your market? Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.
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ReplyDeleteYou know what else? You can steal a paper from your neighbor's porch if you get up early enough. Big deal.
ReplyDeleteWhat's astonishing is this disconnect between people who seem to find the content valuable but don't actually want to pay for it.
Well, to be fair we can all agree that a car is pretty valuable, but if it doesn't run unless by the occasional exception, what rational person would hand over the cash for an inconsistent clunker?
ReplyDeleteThe point is that it's a good value when it is free, but when it costs something- not so much.
ReplyDeleteThat Craigslist ad eventually will expire. Here's the text:
ReplyDeleteI posted how do do this before and they changed the site, so here's how to do it now:
In Firefox go to into Options, click the "Privacy" tab, click "Remove Individual Cookies", Select delawareonline.com and "Remove Cookies". You now have 5 more free articles.
I'm sure it's about the same in Internet Explorer. Any cookies that start with "gannett" or "gnt" are also stored from their website, but they don't store the 5 free article restrictions (yet).
It's a pity that people in this business don't understand the basic finances of newspapers. The price we pay for a subscription doesn't even cover the cost of printing the paper and delivering it. There's nothing in the subscription fee to pay for the newsroom. So, why should we pay for the cost of the newsroom to get our news online? We paid for the computer and the Internet service, which replaced the cost of printing and delivery for the paper. So the content should be free. That's the business model newspapers adopted in the middle of the 20th Century, and it's too late to turn back now.
ReplyDeleteAnother way around the paywall: Use more than one browser. Each one gets a different cookie, so each gets 5 articles.
ReplyDeleteYet another way: Simply devote one browser to reading newspapers and delete all of the cookies every day. That way, you'll get five articles a day for free from a Gannett site.
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ReplyDeleteWho reads five newspaper articles a day any more? That's well beyond the attention span of most people these days.
ReplyDelete"So, why should we pay for the cost of the newsroom to get our news online?"
ReplyDeleteIn case you hadn't noticed, advertisers aren't going to fund newsrooms anymore, so if newsroom employees want to eat regularly, somebody's got to figure out a revenue model that will work in THIS century.
Incognito mode or private browsing mode (depending on your browser). Simply close the browser when you hit the limit, restart in the same mode, and continue reading.
ReplyDeleteTruth be told, if you get more than three articles worth reading on a daily basis on any Gannett site, consider it a rare thing.
So Jim you believe it is ok to steal content from media companies?
ReplyDeleteWhen a media content designs a cookie-based paywall, they aren't really protecting it in the first place.
ReplyDeleteSorry, media company. It's so hard to tell what Gannett is anymore - news organization, advertising clearinghouse, Purpose Project experts ...
ReplyDelete2:23 The Craigslist user is advising readers to take advantage of an obvious technical flaw in Gannett's paywall. Does that qualify as theft?
ReplyDeleteA popular Rochester NY media blogger posted a link to another blog with numerous pay wall work-arounds last month.
ReplyDeleteIt went viral in the Rochester area rather quickly.
It constitutes hacking and piracy, which are illegal activities.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of an argument I had with a parent about their kids seeing multiple movies on one ticket at a local theater. They figured because it was fairly easy to do, the owners must not care that patrons do it.
ReplyDeleteMy response was that it's easy to steal from the collection plate at church; does that make it morally acceptable? Intellectual property IS property. And theft is theft.
I have no special love for Gannett, but the product is produced by skilled people who work at least as hard as workers in car factories or perfume factories or spaghetti factories. If it's wrong to steal the fruits of their labor, why would it be all right to steal the work of news workers?