jontsai

Oh, hi, fellow Bible geek!

If the news sites want to display a different version of their sites via logged-out experience, that's one thing.

If they are sending the full article HTML to your browser, allowing it to fully display for several seconds, before covering it up with a paywall div/iframes, it should be fair use for you to view what you've already downloaded to your computer.

The plugin simply acts like as a sieve on the client-side to filter the covered-up HTML to the front.

You can already circumvent paywalls by using text-based browsers like Lynx.

That's like if a magazine company sends you a copy of their magazine in the mail. You already got it in the mailbox. And they put on the cover of the magazine: "If you don't agree to subscribing, don't read this and throw it in the trash, or mail it back to us."

Many ISPs have recently started charging for bandwidth usage. I have to pay for the data that I consume. They are forcing me to pay unwillingly for data usage by click-baiting me into wanting to view the article, then displaying the full article for several seconds, then covering it up with HTML divs.

The companies have the technological capabilities based on browser cookie info to send me a redacted version of their site. They should just do that.

I built a Google Chrome extension that removes the paywall from news websites.

It currently handles nytimes.com, businessinsider.com.

For reasons, I will probably not publishing this in the Chrome webstore. I'm open to requests to add additional sites.

This was simply too irresistible to not post.

tldr;

I read through probably half of the comments and then skimmed the rest, so sorry if this was already mentioned:

What if Netflix streaming service improves A LOT, and their movie collection grows to encompass pretty much every movie out there? A lot of the discussion has assumed that Netflix would remain the same, but with their focusing exclusively on streaming, I could see how they would have more leverage to negotiate with content owners to license movies--for one, they could charge a higher subscription fee and offer more revenue share for streaming and a more comprehensive catalog, something that I'd be very happy to pay an extra $5 for (I currently only have the streaming plan)

Thanks for that clarification, it makes more sense.

Oh, one more thing to add: Google Apps is free for up to 10 users, so arguably, email and collaboration is even more important than the other infrastructure stuff. Paying for a luxury when something even more basic is free? Hmmm...