Lincoln JournalStar pay-to-read program discussion

knapplc

knapplc

Active member
The Lincoln JournalStar has begun charging the public to read their online content. You get ten free article views per month, then after that you have to pay to see anything else. It's $10 per month, and that's pretty steep, so there are going to be some people trying to figure out how to get around it.

It's, unsurprisingly, very easy to circumvent. It's cookie-based, so you just axe your LJS cookie and boom - ten more articles to read. Google's Chrome browser has been reported to allow you to browse untracked, and FireFox offers a number of track-blocking add-ons that you could install. As usual, the LJS has gone about this in a ham-fisted manner.

However, I think we need to stop discussions about how to get around their pay-to-read thing. There's already a thread on BigHuskerFan.com explaining how to get more reads by clearing cookies, and I think that's something we don't want to get into here. Everyone agree? If so, should we handle this on a case-by-case basis?

 
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I'm not sure there's anything illegal about clearing your cookies. This seems to me to be a problem on the LJS end. It's like how the New York Times (used to? I have no idea anymore) had a similar paywall that could be circumvented by disabling javascript

I don't know if it makes sense to protect the LJS for their mistake. People will talk about it, and it ought to be up to them to plug the gap. If this were a more sinister crack I could see it...but what are they going to do, take action against message boards for allowing discussion on clearing cookies?

 
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I think the fact that they could take us to court for it would be penalty enough. They don't even have to win, just make it cost enough for us to defend the post that it's not worth it.

 
Could they? (question for Frank).

If this were something like, users sharing mirrors of the site, that would be one thing. However, they are simply pointing out that their mechanism is cookie based, and clearing cookies gets past it. I don't have the legal expertise here, but it seems like that discussion is harmless.

 
Well, for the most part websites like ours have usually been held harmless for this kind of thing. Usually. But I then to agree we need to discourage it, just like we do with postings that point to illegal file sharing or video postings or Husker game feeds. While we would most likely be okay if sued, I think we'd like ot avoid the cost and time involved just to defend ourselves. Also, it tends to reinforce our actions in the other examples I cited.

I don't see a need to post a topic about it - just like with posts for Husker game feeds, we can simply lock it and hide the post with the information, and remind the members that we don't allow posts that circumvent or permit accessing copyright material.

 
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