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Tell HN: Bypass Paywalls repository is gone

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Re: Tell HN: Bypass Paywalls repository is gone

#61
post #56
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, Gitlab has gotten ridiculous. They're making me sign up for an account, verify email, go through two captchas, and fill out a survey before they'll let me view the repository. . . . and now that I've done all that the repository is 404ing.

They really had an opportunity to capture significant market share and they ruined it. Their interface also doesn’t work without javascript. What a shame.

I suspect it was a conscious decision, they went for large, paying, enterprise customers instead of fighting for the free, public, and open source projects.

Re: Tell HN: Bypass Paywalls repository is gone

#64

Now I wish I had bookmarked the distributed (peer to peer?) github replacement I’ve seen trend on HN a couple of times. It seems like a good place to host something like this. Anyone remember which tool I’m talking about?

https://radicle.xyz/ This?

Re: Tell HN: Bypass Paywalls repository is gone

#65
Why was this hosted on gitlab.com ? If you're not on github, the discoverablity is pretty low. You are not self hosting. There is no upside for a project like this to be on gitlab.com. If you're already taking the hit of not being mainstream, why not self host in a sane country ?

Re: Tell HN: Bypass Paywalls repository is gone

#66

Now I wish I had bookmarked the distributed (peer to peer?) github replacement I’ve seen trend on HN a couple of times. It seems like a good place to host something like this. Anyone remember which tool I’m talking about?

https://radicle.xyz/ most likely.

Re: Tell HN: Bypass Paywalls repository is gone

#67

Why was this hosted on gitlab.com ? If you're not on github, the discoverablity is pretty low. You are not self hosting. There is no upside for a project like this to be on gitlab.com. If you're already taking the hit of not being mainstream, why not self host in a sane country ?

I don't know about this project, but some projects fled GitHub on principle, when they sold out to MS.

If this project were, say, an adtech company, or someone publishing open source solely for resume-boosting reasons, then principles might not matter.

Re: Tell HN: Bypass Paywalls repository is gone

#68

Do bypasses like this, which I assume just do things like deleting "uncloseable" client-side modals and spoofing UA/referrer headers, count as copy-protection circumvention technology under the DMCA?

Maybe it's fraud? The user claims to be reading an article via a facebook reference but in fact does not use facebook.

Hard to see how to police that from the web site's perspective though.

To be clear I'm not advocating for anything here.

Re: Tell HN: Bypass Paywalls repository is gone

#69

Do bypasses like this, which I assume just do things like deleting "uncloseable" client-side modals and spoofing UA/referrer headers, count as copy-protection circumvention technology under the DMCA?

Does the thing being bypassed prevent you from saving the page, or from making in any other way a copy of any content you've already fetched? If not, how could it be classed as copy-protection? Edit: One other thing: if spoofing UA headers was a problem, all the browsers in the world would fall foul of it - because non-Mozilla browsers all say that they're Mozilla, and Opera said it was IE, and Chrome said it was Saf…

this is basically the "computer scientist" view of the world in https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23, especially the Monolith bit. spoofing UA could be legal in general or when done for interoperability but illegal when done with intent to bypass access control.

Re: Tell HN: Bypass Paywalls repository is gone

#70

Why was this hosted on gitlab.com ? If you're not on github, the discoverablity is pretty low. You are not self hosting. There is no upside for a project like this to be on gitlab.com. If you're already taking the hit of not being mainstream, why not self host in a sane country ?

1) There are lots of reasons to avoid Github and they are all spelled Microsoft.

2) Putting something on Gitlab means that there is one level of activation energy between idiots trying to pad out some corporate "social goodwill" number by "fixing" things on your project.

If I ever had to open-source anything, I would host it somewhere else and mirror a read-only repo to github.

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