NYT's New $40 M Paywall Can be Defeated With 4 Lines Of Code!

As you may be aware, Pravda-on-the-Hudson is going to a paywall system designed to get people who read it to pay a fairly steep fee for the privilege - $15 to $35 a month, depending on the package.

They reportedly spent up to $40 million dollars designing this sophisticated paywall, which allows 'casual readers' up to 20 articles a month for free, which the Times justifies by figuring they'll look at the advertising.

I personally consider this the dying gasp of an icon of the dinosaur media, and as far as I'm concerned,it can't come too soon and I hope it's fairly painful.I read considerably less than 20 articles a month,and that's mainly to point out Pravda-on-the-Hudson's latest journalistic atrocity.

However, there may be some of you whom actually can't live without the wit and wisdom of Modo, Tom Friedman, Paul Krugman, Frank Rich, Nick Cristoff and the rest of the Treason Times crew.And there's certainly no reason you should have to pay any more for it than it's worth.

Fortunately, some techies have discovered to their amusment that the Time's $40 million paywall system can be defeated with just four lines of javascript code. And while the Times may be able to fix this particular hole ( and I say may, because fixing it might result in problems with the various search engines like Google), the silly thing is so poorly designed that right clicking on the Paywall notice and choosing “Inspect Element” gives rise to all sorts of possibilities.

And if that's too difficult, apparently a Canadian techie named David Hayes has just released NYTClean, a bookmarklet that, in one click, tears down the Times’ paywall on any article you fancy.

Always glad to help.

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