231–240 of 246 posts
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I keep seeing this recommended, but it hasn't worked for me yet. What gives?
You're probably using sites with a harsher paywall? What sites?
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You're probably using sites with a harsher paywall? What sites?
Looking through my history I've tried & failed irishtimes.com and wsj.com. It might be a short list, but it's every site I've tried, so you can imagine 2 for 2 is starting to leave an impression.
Broadly speaking these workarounds are for websites that sometimes show you the full story (i.e. based on a cookie or your referer).
I know I'll get downvoted for this but I feel like this stuff is pretty close to theft. I can understand justifying ad-blocking, arguing that you don't want to see it. So even though you're depriving them of revenue while consuming the product funded by it, there's at least an argument that you're only controlling what you see. But using tricks to get access to something not available to you without paying? This seem…
I think you’re engaging in some cognitive dissonance yourself to justify ad-blocking. The situation really isn’t any different. The ads are what pay for the product, so if you purposefully block all the ads, you’re not paying for the content you’re reading. It’s up to you whether to pay attention to the ads, but outright blocking them is exactly the same as blocking the “please subscribe” wall.
Not "it is better", but "you'd be insane not to".
Secondly, I've never ever heard of a case where the site showing the malvertisements offered any sort of compensation to their victims. If that's how sites like to see the ads, all profits to them and zero responsibility, I see absolutely zero problems with adblocking.
I use https://12ft.io/
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I made no claim about the relative morality of piracy vs. license violations. But I will note that you are (by using the framing of "stealing") implying that piracy results in lost sales, which is largely not the case, except possibly for the most popular works. See "Piracy is Progressive Taxation": https://www.oreilly.com/content/piracy-is-progressive-taxati...
If a publisher or author doesn't mind, as is the case with the article you linked, that's fantastic. O'reilly is a good business. But it's still stealing. I think if you have the money, you should pay for the product. It's one thing for a teenager to download a bunch of songs on Kazaa in 2000. But I don't understand why so many self respecting adult knowledge workers feel the need to pirate things they can afford jus…
In all cases, the price paid by the user is split in proportion which clearly shows that saying that "pirating" means stealing money from authors is utterly false. I have nothing against paying for books the amount really passed to authors plus some additional fair amount based on the true cost of distribution (eg. printing and transport or electronic storing and transfer) plus a modest profit. However, it is not the case nowadays.
Similarly, I would accept payments for articles in a model where the price for a good article wouldn't cover the costs of many worthless ones. The current model - subscription - is attempting to hide real costs of production of articles of very different value under average price forcing readers to purchase wholesale products. Why should one pay for "fillers" the same money as for good content?
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What did the publisher lose that he had before?
Revenue for the service obviously. If everyone acted like the people in question and nobody paid for the service it could not sustain itself, so paying customers effectively subsidize free riders.
Maybe pick 1 or 2 newspapers you consider to be truthful to actually get a subscriptions for, besides using this addon. I get it, there are newspapers out there you really don't check out that often, and they have no free articles per month or "purchase this article", and paying 20 dollars for a subscription for 2 articles a month at 10 different newspapers is a little much. But the more people don't pay for news, th…
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What did the publisher lose that he had before?
Well, the publisher paid people for their writing (or content), and then hosts it for revenue. The publisher didn't pay them in order to give it away for free. If you start using digital lockpicks to pick their digital lock, and consume their content without paying, they have lost the revenue haven't they? (Cue "they're not entitled to revenue for intangible goods", and other libertarian arguments that are internally…
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My understanding of the tool is that it actually _is_ the equivalent of avoiding looking at something. The browser either has been delivered the content already or has access to the content, but it's wrapped in an advertisement to subscribe instead of an advertisement for some third party. Looks like it uses the same mechanisms that tools like uBlock use. Similarly, I avoid looking at the advertisements bundled in my…
This is what I meant - this is a technical justification that dodges the point. How the info is rendered isn't really important to my claim - that it is fully intended to be restricted unless you pay, and you wouldn't be able to see it without employing this trick. The trick is expressly designed to get you around a "paywall". This is retroactive justification for sneaking past the security guard when he's looking th…
The practice discussed here is more like the scam where they forcibly put a "good" in hands of a prospect, saying it's a gift, and then demanding a payment.