Monday, March 28, 2011

The NYT Paywall is Up, BUT So Are the Hackers

Yes, there are ways to get around NYT's new paywall.

So if you

1.don't believe in IP

2.believe in IP but are morally corrupt

3.believe in IP, don't think you are morally corrupt, but can do mental jujitsu to justify why you shouldn't pay for NYT content

there are solutions. Extremely helpful: One is even moral for IP believers.

So what are these hacks?

Business Insider and its crack team of TEN engineers have come up with seven ways that you won't have to put money in NYT's meter.

6 comments:

  1. Wenzel,

    I don't even want to know what kind of mental jujitsu you're doing, posting links to tips on how to circumvent IP protections, as a person who believes in IP!

    How's that book coming along, by the way?

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  2. After I read the BI piece I had a chuckle. For an irrelevant relic of the mainstream Old Guard, it sure seems important to people to find a way to access their worthless news coverage without paying for it!

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  3. Ha, you are missing a few categories:

    --don't believe IP is just but recognize that it exists and are risk averse so you respect the actual (unjust) law;

    --don't believe IP law is just but are a legal positivist and think that it's still the law even if it's unjust, and there is a moral duty to abide by (even unjust) law (even some libertarians... even some ANARCHISTS... make this argument, shockingly, but I won't mention names! but it has to do with a duty to abide by laws that are generated by a "trustworty"--but not infallible--process, meaning you have an obligation to obey even unjust laws if they issue from such a process).

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  4. Don't you think you are giving the New York Times a lot of credit by calling it "intellectual"? Mocking aside, this porous pay wall idea strikes me as foolish. If the Times was aggressive about protecting their content, there's much better ways to do it, such as subscriber-only areas and the like. Only the most dedicated NYT adherents will pay.

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  5. why go to all that work to read the crap that dribbles out of the NYT?

    too much time policing the dark side of the force means you might not notice how ugly the sith lord really is.

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  6. First, you can mostly tell what the NY Times will say on any subject, without bothering to read the piece.

    Second. When there's a worthwhile author, some other fellow's usually pinched the piece and posted it somewhere else, so you have a very secondary moral culpability, if you read that posted piece....so long as you don't repost it and drive up commercial traffic from that for yourself, without cutting the author in.

    Next, if you link and cite the author, he is probably better off, and you haven't hurt him intellectually.

    Finally - financial injury.

    Current rights agreements usually protect the publisher's commercial interest, not the writer's...which is fair enough, if they contracted voluntarily.

    So, most likely, the biggest injury is to the NY Times' finances.

    Hmmm. Think...think...

    The NY Times is a propaganda rag, with blood-drenched hands..

    So now you've also struck a blow against mind control, totalitarianism, and perpetual war....

    On the whole, from my perspective, it looks like you come out well on the black side of the moral ledger....

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