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Comment by LegitShady | Hacker News Reader

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LegitShady

paywall

edit: how can I access this blocked content without giving the NYT my information or installing a browser add on?

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From the HN FAQ (link at bottom of the page):

Are paywalls ok?

It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.

In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic.

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The NY Times paywall is easily circumvented by blocking JavaScript and cookies, which can be done on a per-site basis using a browser add-on like uMatrix.

Thank you. I’ve been trying to something that would work on iOS. Does anyone know an iOS browser that would allow that?

>It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.

A subjective rule whose interpretation is based on circumstances of individual readers. Everything has a workaround if you're an advanced enough developer, right? Unless you're reading on an ipad, then you can't do anything you describe.

Maybe the rule should be if you post a paywall site, you must also post a workaround to prove it exists and show others how to use it, putting the onus on the poster to explain access to the content they post.

I think this brings up a good point. Is copy and paste considered a workaround? While a considerably low tech solution it does defeat any and all paywalls. If we also consider it a workaround the we should simply change the answer to "Are paywalls ok?" to "Yes, but be kind to the reader and copy the content to a paste and submit that as a comment".

https://pastebin.com/pQmzkfbQ

You shouldn't just copy paywalled content onto Hacker News. It's reasonable to question whether paywalled sources should be posted, but you are stealing content and harming the interests of one of the US's major journalism companies in doing so.

The same NYT article copied verbatim on other news sites. If content was "stolen", which is impossible given the definition of the word steal, then it was done the second the article was published.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Jailed+Huawei+Workers+Raised+a+For...

Google News link to the non-paywalled NYT story

https://news.google.com/articles/CAIiECNO4ER356cFN2qTNmfKQcU...

The content was not paywalled.

Also, read the FAQ's on paywalled content. It seems Hacker News also disagrees with your definition of steal.

outline.com/$original_url

nope, it just requires signing in.

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