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On the Future of 12ft

12ft.io

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Re: On the Future of 12ft

#101

Post by dfee »

dfee wrote: post #40
wrs wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the heck are the “rules of the web”? Only valueless information is allowed to be indexed? Are you offended that when you search for a book on Amazon you have to pay to read the whole thing?

> Are you offended that when you search for a book on Amazon you have to pay to read the whole thing? You don’t. ;) And, those are the rules of the web.

Don’t understand the downvotes. There are legal ways to read books (https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libby/) and the ability to straight up not read the books but read summaries instead. The internet has provided this free flow of ideas and repackaging of thoughts.

There are also ways to read books that circumvent copyright, but in the spirit of this discussion, that’s not necessary to dive into.

Re: On the Future of 12ft

#102

Post by JimDabell »

probably_wrong wrote: post #92
imgabe wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Google penalize sites that show something different to the crawler than they do to a regular user?

I know that this used to be common knowledge, but evidence points to "no". Or at least to "either not anymore or not strongly enough". Clear examples of websites that block content from me: Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, newspapers.

According to Google:

> Cloaking refers to the practice of presenting different content or URLs to human users and search engines. Cloaking is considered a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines because it provides our users with different results than they expected.

— https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guideline...

It’s clear that Google aren’t enforcing this rule thoroughly though.

Edit: It’s possible that the allowed sites are using JSON-LD to avoid being classified as cloaking:

> This page describes how to use schema.org JSON-LD to indicate paywalled content on your site with CreativeWork properties. This structured data helps Google differentiate paywalled content from the practice of cloaking, which violates our guidelines.

— https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/structure...

Re: On the Future of 12ft

#104

Post by kalleboo »

Shank wrote: post #87
fastball wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made a website for piracy when I was a kid and did the exact same thing; was definitely ironic for people to pay for something to avoid paying. But I think it always has been and will continue to be more of a UX problem than a "wanting stuff for completely free" problem. Case in point, a couple hours ago I tried to stream the Super Bowl from the official NFL website, but failed multiple times to finish their checko…

The problem I have with news sites is that in-general, news sites are extremely hard to cancel subscriptions to. Even piracy sites that offer "donation benefits" are usually non-recurring or easily-cancelled. Even though I can easily afford to pay for the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, in-practice, I refuse because I know that cancellation is going to be an extremely arduous activity that isn't going to be fu…

News publications also still think they're competing with each other. Like, it seems like each newspaper assumes you're going to subscribe to them and then go there every morning like it's the 1990's and get 100% of your news from them, and charge accordingly.

If I'm going to pay for news it's going to have to be an all-you-can-eat deal like the music streaming services. I'll pay if it means that like 70% of the news links I click from Google News, social media or reddit are covered.

Re: On the Future of 12ft

#105

Post by 878654Tom »

john-doe wrote: post #58

I used 12ft for some time and got tired of loading bloated news websites twice. Archive.today is a good alternative but means making copies of crap articles somewhere else, while I just want to read them once. Ultimately I recommend txtify.it, a service that uses Readability, as a more sensible solution. Bookmarklet: javascript:q=location.hostname+location.pathname;location.href=" https://txtify.it/"+q ;

Why not use the reader viewer feature of Firefox and Chrome? With Firefox I even like the fact that you can use text2speech so very long stories can be put on the background.

Re: On the Future of 12ft

#106

Post by anonporridge »

ketzo wrote: post #54

This person is asking for money in order to help provide a service… and that service is “stop other people from asking for money to provide a service.” Hard not to feel a little irony. There are approximately three outcomes here. 1. Google shuts this guy down, some way or another 2. Paywalled sites sue this into oblivion Or worst of all , 3. Google stops being able to usefully surface decent news content. Paywalls ar…

A long term solution is micropayments.

I'm happy to pay a few cents to read an article. I'm absolutely NOT happy to be forced to sign up for 10 different subscriptions.

Re: On the Future of 12ft

#107

Post by ChrisLomont »

probably_wrong wrote: post #94
ChrisLomont wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is theft under federal law, punishable by up to 5 years in prison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Electronic_Theft_Act

I read the text of the act [1] and the related sections in the US code [2]. I would argue that, assuming I read Title 18 correctly, this act doesn't apply to 12ft: the distribution is neither for "private financial gain" (Section 506.a) nor the distribution of "a work being prepared for commercial distribution" (because it's already released, Section 506.c). That leaves 506.b, but for that you need to show that the a…

12ft.io is most certainly for financial gain. This thread is about them charging.

Also the act defines financial gain not about money, but about things 12ft.io engages in :"‘The term ‘financial gain’ includes receipt, or expectation of receipt, of anything of value, including the receipt of other copyrighted works."

Goodwill is considered value, even is included in company valuations. If 12ft.io expects or receives goodwill (which it does), it has financial gain.

And there's still simple good old infringement, at $150k a pop, which would likely put 12ft.io on the hook for millions to billions of dollars. Each unique article served carries a $150k bill.

There's also likely many other statues, such as accessing a computer for committing a crime, which is yet more federal prison time.

Whomever runs 12ft.io had better hope they can hide before someone locates and charges them.

Re: On the Future of 12ft

#108

Post by eminence32 »

donkarma wrote: post #100
dreamcompiler wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Because your IP address is not one of Google's. This trick worked years ago but not today.

use a GCP instance

I'm pretty sure that CGP instances don't allocate IP addresses from the same range as google crawlers.

See also: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/...

Re: On the Future of 12ft

#109

Post by john-doe »

878654Tom wrote: post #105
john-doe wrote: post #58

I used 12ft for some time and got tired of loading bloated news websites twice. Archive.today is a good alternative but means making copies of crap articles somewhere else, while I just want to read them once. Ultimately I recommend txtify.it, a service that uses Readability, as a more sensible solution. Bookmarklet: javascript:q=location.hostname+location.pathname;location.href=" https://txtify.it/"+q ;

Why not use the reader viewer feature of Firefox and Chrome? With Firefox I even like the fact that you can use text2speech so very long stories can be put on the background.

I believe txtify.it bypasses paywalls in some cases. Also, you can share the generated links.

Re: On the Future of 12ft

#110

Post by john-doe »

godelski wrote: post #88
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #55

Every time I tried to use this thing it said it was disabled for every site I tried.

For example, I was just looking at a NYT article and nothing happened: https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-fin... Similarly Outline: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-financing-the-multi-trillio... But the current top comment's txtify did: https://txtify.it/https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-financing... (though this doesn't have pictures) Honestly I find that the vast majority of these services don…

https://archive.is/J2x72
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