The New York Times is going to introduce “paywall”, a system which limits visitors to 20 articles per month, globally on March 28. After the free articles a message appears (as below) that asks users to sign up for unlimited access to the contents on the site.
The New York Times stock, for instance, is trading at 15 year highs & they recently announced they are raising subscription prices: The New York Times is raising the price of its digital subscription for the first time, from $15 every four weeks to $17 — from about $195 to $221 a year. The Financial Times has announced a 10p pro-rata cover price increase for its FT Weekend edition, bringing the papers recommended retail price to £4. The change came into effect on the first weekend of September, retaining its retailer’s margins at 22%, increasing them from 85p to 88p. The New York Times paywall is costing the newspaper $40-$50 million to design and construct, Bloomberg has reported. And it can be defeated through four lines of Javascript. That fact is both the problem and the opportunity of a leaky paywall. There is no one consistent, workable price for online news content. The New York Times Company is listed at New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and have a market cap 2.85B USD. What are Porter Five (5) Forces In his revolutionary article - 'Five Forces that Shape Strategy', Michael Porter observed five forces that have significant impact on a firm's profitability in its industry. As most paywall-based news sites use your IP address to keep track of how many times you have read an article on their site, using a VPN will ensure that your IP address is changed every time, allowing you to bypass the newspaper site’s paywall and giving you unlimited access to news articles.
When you reach the 20-article limit and try to read more, the article loads just fine and is also visible in the page source, however it quickly gets covered by the overlay.
So here are three simple ways to block that overlay in all browsers and continue reading.
Update: The NYTimes has updated their paywall. The content is no longer hidden behind a big transparent div, but instead is now actually removed from the page entirely. It’s still simple to defeat, though. Using your favorite adblocker, block the following URLs:
And you’re done.
Google Chrome
For Google Chrome users, there’s an extension called New York Times Paywall Smasher available. Just install it and you will have unlimited access.
Here’s a demo video created by the developer:
Install:New York Times Paywall Smasher
All other browsers
Use a bookmarklet called NYTCleanNYClean. Simply visit the site and drag the bookmarklet onto your bookmarks toolbar. Whenever NYTimes block you from reading an article, click on it.
There’s another userscript available called the NY Times Paywall. This script works similar to the Chrome extension by automatically blocking the overlay. Thus allowing you to continue reading articles without having to click anything.
Those two methods will work on all browsers.
Instant Methods
If you don’t want to install anything and are looking for a quick to way to read an article, then simply remove “?gwh=numbers” from the URL.
The site uses cookies to keep count of your read articles, so you can also clear the browser cache, or switch browsers to start afresh. If you are on Google Chrome, you can use an extension called Forget Me to delete cookies and cache of only the New York Times website.
Related tips:
An extension has surfaced in the Chrome Web Store that lets you breach the defenses of one of the web's earliest paywall pioneers.
Read WSJ Extension lets you read full articles from the online version of Rupert Murdoch's The Wall Street Journal, giving you free access to some of media's most coveted paid-for content.
Murdoch inherited the paywall from the WSJ's earlier owners, the Bancroft family, in 2007, and he has since erected similar defenses around his existing stable of titles, including The Times of London and the UK's best-selling Sunday read, The News of the World.
New York Times Paywall Smasher Browser
Read WSJ Extension joins A Free Press, which lets you bypass one of the newest paywalls in town, that of The New York Times. The NYT's paywall requires you to sign up once you've clicked your 21st article in one month.
Browser extensions are the easiest ways for ordinary internet users and newspaper readers to tear through such paper defenses. There are other options, but these rely on some knowledge of the browser or of coding, such as turning off JavaScript or hacking CSS.
Yet more options include relying on the shortcomings of the wall's code so you can read individual pieces passed on through services like Twitter. Alternatively, you can simply look for links in the returns of search engines such as Google or Bing, although what you can read is still limited.
With a browser extension, within two or three clicks, you can read what you want to read, –minus the complications or the restrictions.
Another NYT paywall-busting tool called NYTClean is available outside the Chrome Web Store, but it takes a little Googling and knowing what you're looking for to find. App stores and marketplaces make finding apps for a given device considerably easier and less of an exercise in lateral thinking – putting extensions in a marketplace such as the Chrome store makes extensions potentially easier for the ordinary user to find.
A Free Press is the second anti-NYT-paywall extension written specially for Chrome, following the New York Times Paywall Smasher. The fate of that forerunner, though, demonstrates the grey legal world in which such apps operate, and how exposed they can be: Paywall Smasher is no longer available in Google's browser store. It was allegedly removed by Google.
Content providers as app police
When asked, Google did not to comment on why Paywall Smasher was no longer available. 'We remove apps from the Chrome Web Store that do not comply with our terms of service,' a spokesman told us.
As with the Android market, Google takes a laissez-faire approach to what goes into the Chrome Web Store. Apps and extensions submitted to the Chrome store are run through an automated review process in 'real-time', the company tells us. This process, it says, publishes 'most' apps and extensions immediately, without manual review.
Google says that if a particular content owner feels that their trademarks or terms of service have been violated, they are welcome to follow the take down–request process detailed in the developer terms of service document. The onus is on the content owners rather than Google to be vigilant. For Google, it's a typical approach.
With Chrome Web Store, Google is hoping to duplicate the success of Apple's App Store, which has racked up 500,000 iOS apps after just three years in operation. The Chrome store has just under 5,000 apps.
Judging by Google's terms of service, there are at least two potential reasons why the NYT and WSJ paywall-busters might upset the papers' owners and potentially share the fate of Paywall Smasher. Google's rules do not allow apps that violate a third party's terms of service, or that infringe on the intellectual property rights or trademarks of others.
The papers are very clear about what you're not allowed to do with their words and pictures. The WSJ's terms of service says you cannot sell, publish, distribute, retransmit, or otherwise provide access to its content without written permission. The NYT has similar rules to protect its content.
'We're in it for the LOLs, honest'
This might explain why the paywall-busters' creators don't identify themselves in the Chrome Web Store, unlike other app authors. Also, they paint their apps in non-commercial colors, so they can't be accused of trying to make money off of somebody's copyrighted or trademarked work.
Text accompanying the Read WSJ Extension tells us: 'This is just a fun side project with absolutely no commercial motivations.' A Free Press' write-up says: 'A Free Press focuses on improving the web accessibility of certain news websites so that visitors can more easily enjoy the news content that is downloaded to their browser. No copyright infringement is intended; for educational purposes only.'
What happens next appears to be in the hands of the NYT and WSJ, as it looks like it is the papers' responsibility to complain to Google, should they feel violated. That won't settle things, however. The fact the New York Times Paywall Smasher is survived by two paywall-busting plug-ins demonstrates that the willingness to build more for these and other titles is there. And as we know, developers are an awfully resourceful, motivated, and 'idealistic' bunch.
New York Times Paywall Smasher Browser Extension
With more paywalls going up – yes, The New York Post is another Murdoch title – Google might be forced by frustrated 'old media' tycoons like the Dirty Digger to become less hands-off and more proactive in policing its browser's app store. ®