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I just tried clicking on "Harper Lee, Author of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ Dies at Age 89" from wsj.com's homepage and got the paywall. I then pasted the headline into google and clicked on it from Google results and did not get hit by the paywall.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the computer on the public Internet responds to a standard HTTP request, it has explicitly authorized my access to whatever information it sent me.
You are confusing an engineering process with a legal one. Unfortunately, when the prosecutors come, they will only care about the legal process.
If they're now blocking clicks from Google, doesn't that mean that they're cloaking and violating the Google's Webmaster Guidelines [1]? [1]: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355?hl=en
Google is not okay with cloaking, but they will whitelist publishers if the publisher specifically includes a parameter that declares if the site requires registration or subscription. This is done in the sitemap. https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/74288?hl=en
You can also access WSJ for free at the library.
And congratulations, you have likely just "exceeded authorized access" and committed a felony violation of the CFAA punishable by a fine or imprisonment for not more than 5 years under 18 U.S.C. § 1030(c)(2)(B)(i). From the ABA: "Exceeds authorized access is defined in the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) to mean "to access a computer with authorization and to use such access to obtain or alter information in the…
Google was fortunately that no one sued them for these things before they got big enough to defend themselves. Many tech entrepreneurs haven't been so lucky.
You may ask why a big company like Google isn't doing more to change the CFAA or copyright law. The reason is now that they're big enough, legal grey areas like those in the CFAA (particularly, "what is unauthorized access?", because it's not defined by the statute) can be fully exploited, and Google can sit secure in the knowledge that they'll never be realistically challenged on it; meanwhile, they can then threaten potential competitors for doing the same thing, since a lawsuit against a public corporation takes 10 years and $5MM-$20MM. Anyone who could mount that kind of offense against Google won't, because they benefit from the grey area too; they'll just make some backroom deal with Google and not lose their lucrative, competition-destroying ability to do things that companies with sub-$100M revenues aren't able to do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In that case, I'm just going to set my User-Agent permanently to Google's crawler for fun and see how the web renders, in general. Just for fun, because I want to see what the world looks like from a different perspective. That's my intent. I've stated it. Now that my user agent has been changed, I'm going to go grab lunch, carry on with life, maybe check out some cat pictures and then maybe some news sites over tea…
In my opinion the WSJ has a major rendering bug that affects everyone except for the google search crawler, and I selectively set my User Agent to get around said bug.
Which doesn't matter, because the WSJ is never going to sue you. But make sure you only consider your justification a personal one, not one that would provide any legal protection.
If they're now blocking clicks from Google, doesn't that mean that they're cloaking and violating the Google's Webmaster Guidelines [1]? [1]: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66355?hl=en
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's intent that matters. Setting user-agent in order to properly render a page is legal. Setting a user-agent string to gain access to otherwise unauthorized content is probably not.
Unauthorized? If you put up a sign and tell people they have to pay to look at it, is it illegal to look at it and not pay? This should be a rhetorical question.
Knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a
protected computer without authorization, or exceeds
authorized access, and by means of such conduct
furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value,
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your request wouldn't be 'standard', it would be deliberately malformed to bypass a paywall. You guys are performing linguistic gymnastics to get around that fact.
As you've indicated, a request can only be considered malformed if it doesn't conform to the standards. Here is what the relevant RFC[0] has to say about the User-Agent header: > Likewise, implementations are encouraged not to use the product tokens of other implementations in order to declare compatibility with them, as this circumvents the purpose of the field. If a user agent masquerades as a different user agent,…
That is demonstrably false. I, personally, can consider any request malformed unless it starts with the letter W. Regardless of what the standards say, I can think whatever I want to.
Similarly, the law can make up whatever rules IT wants to about the definition of "malformed". In that case, it pays some scant attention to things like standards, but mostly cares about "to the random guy-on-the-street (jury member or judge) did this seem like stealing". And there, I am afraid you lose.
Based on the comments here, am I to understand that constantly browsing the web with my user agent string set to a googlebot string, I am committing a felony? How would I even know which sites I'm gaining unauthorized access to? That is completely idiotic if there is a string you can put in a Mozilla browser config that is literally illegal to browse the web with.