HN Stories Behind Paywalls

29 points by cont4gious 15 years ago | 35 comments

Recently there have been several HN links on the main page to stories behind paywalls. I am a college student, and can neither afford nor have the desire to pay for that content as I can find my news and content for free elsewhere.

This becomes a problem when several highly-ranked stories on the HN are links to sites I assume are behind paywalls, so I simply don't click on stories with from those domains. This is a sad state of affairs.

I realize that because they are charging for access to their stories they can probably create more and better content, but I will never be able to read them because, alas, I cannot access them, and I'm sure that there are a large number of people here in the same situation. Therefore, those stories do us no good because we cannot read them. If at all possible, find another source of the story (when possible) or find a free alternative to the content (also where possible). Perhaps if neither of those things exist, the story must go unshared.

So I ask you, the HN community and the admins here to not allow stories behind paywalls to get to the main page.

jakarta 15 years ago |

I've rarely seen a pay wall story end up on the front page of HN, with the exception of the occasional WSJ article - where people are quick to show how anyone can access it via Google News.

I see a lot of people complaining when NYT articles show up -- but they are often mistakenly thinking it's a paywall. It's not, it's just a free registration barrier. Even when the NYT goes metered in 2011, free members will still be allowed a certain amount of articles per month (similar to the Financial Times articles).

Moreover though, I'd like to point out that most newspapers are extremely affordable for students - almost every publication offers a generous student discount.

When I was a student I had subscriptions to the WSJ and Foreign Affairs because they were pretty cheap, WSJ was something like $15 for 3.75 months and Foreign Affairs was $20 for an entire year. NYTimes Student (M-F) is only $0.50 an issue. The Economist costs only $24 for 3.75 months... or $1.60 an issue. In almost all cases you end up saving between 70-80% when using the student subscriptions.

Plus you can keep subscribing at the same rates even after graduating -- you might have to fill in some bogus information about what course you are taking but it still works.

So, I don't know. I feel like the cost of student subscriptions isn't a whole lot and in that case maybe it's worth subscribing just to be well informed about the world. Certain pubs like the WSJ, FT, or Foreign Affairs will probably never be totally free and in that case, given the small fee they charge I'd be willing to trade eating pizza one day for ramen.

dsplittgerber 15 years ago | |

It's different when you're outside the US, though. A lot of magazines don't seem to cater to customers outside the US, which seems crazy to me, especially in the age of Kindle et al.

I tend to read a lot and it always bugs me to find out that magazines charge about 200-300% on top just for shipping it to EU countries. Also, there is nearly always no digital alternative - no WSJ on the Kindle in Europe, no Barrons in the EU, no digital student rebate for Foreign Affairs, huge shipping costs for Foreign Policy, Reason Magazine etc.

jakarta 15 years ago | | |

That's a really good point - the student subscription route does not work internationally. I don't really know if there is any way around that.

One thing I'll note is that often, if you subscribe to WSJ or Foreign Affairs they also throw in a online log in. Presumably, if your billing information is accepted you could have the print subscriptions mailed somewhere random while you use the online login information. But I've never tried it myself.

netaddict 15 years ago | |

For avoiding NY Times wall, if you are using Chrome, you can just right click the link and "open in new incognito window".

sfgfdhgfdshdhhd 15 years ago | |

"Free registration required"-walls are right up there beside paywalls on the annoy-o-meter. Anyway, the NYT ones pretty clearly ask for payment, though they seem to be different for everybody.

jakarta 15 years ago | | |

They don't ask for payment. And the registration walls might be annoying, but you're getting news for free. It's a trade off. There's content in the NYT that you wont find on Google News, and maybe that's not compelling for you but it seems like most people are willing to register for that free access.

weel 15 years ago | | |

Try bugmenot.

patio11 15 years ago |

I haven't noticed any paywalled stories recently, but let's roll with them existing: I'm unconcerned. Not everybody is going to get equal value out of every HN story. Our community has too diverse interests for that. This is OK. I don't read the Silicon Valley inside baseball about funding, but it is very interesting to many folks here. Similarly, scalable software marketing (email, SEO, whatever) really catches my attention and yet might be boring for folks whose main challenge is fundraising.

You're a poor college student. I sympathize: I was once a poor college student. I am no longer a poor college student. Most of us here are not poor college students. Many of us run profitable businesses. Some pay amounts which would stagger your imagination for "content" (scare quotes because I don't really like that word). Content is, ahem, not a commodity -- the existence of free "content" doesn't compete with the stuff I care about any more than the existence of free food competes with those very ritzy Chicago restaurants Thomas likes.

TallGuyShort 15 years ago |

>> This becomes a problem when several highly-ranked stories on the HN are links to sites I assume are behind paywalls, so I simply don't click on stories with from those domains.

I think that's a bad assumption. I read the top stories quite regularly, and I haven't come across a paywall in a very long time.

gyardley 15 years ago |

If a story becomes highly-ranked, it's almost certainly not behind a paywall, or it wouldn't become highly-ranked in the first place.

Maybe you're thinking of the NYT, where you register once for a free account (or just use a password from bugmenot.com)? Perhaps the WSJ, where the full text of everything is available from Google News?

sfgfdhgfdshdhhd 15 years ago | |

>> Perhaps the WSJ, where the full text of everything is available from Google News?

Why not link to the Google News page instead, then?

cont4gious 15 years ago | |

I was thinking of the NYT articles. Even if I don't have to pay to read them, the principle is the same. I shouldn't have to register on a site to read the content. I can understand registering to interact (comment, etc) but not to simply access.

michael_dorfman 15 years ago | | |

Huh? This makes no sense to me.

Are you arguing that you have a moral right to consume, without limitation, the articles created by the New York Times, without any restrictions whatsoever?

If not, what's you're argument exactly? That the NY Times doesn't have the moral right to require registrations to access their content?

Personally, I love the Times, and I'd be willing to pay for access, if it came to that. I'm happy that they've been able to find a business model that does not require me to pay, and my registering for the site is an insignificant price to pay.

boundlessdreamz 15 years ago |

1. Which are the stories that you are complaining about ?

2. The only time I have seen a similar complaint is when nytimes links are posted. But those stories are not behind a paywall. The registration is free.

A request to anyone complaining about stories on frontpage. Please post links to stories unless they are glaringly obvious (like the wave of iPad articles). I don't remember coming across any paywall. So if there are links to the stories it helps to actually understand what the OP is complaining about.

gaustin 15 years ago |

What domains?

I read (or click through) to most everything that hits the front page and never hit paywalls, except for academic journals.

As annoying as it is to be blocked by a paywall, I don't think that's a valid criteria for censorship. Good content is good content, and often the comments on HN are worth more than the article itself.

byoung2 15 years ago | |

NYTimes sometimes has a paywall, other times it doesn't...maybe the articles are free for a limited time. Usually you can get around the paywall by googling the article title and clicking on it in the results...they have to show Google the full page if they want it indexed.

corin_ 15 years ago | | |

The term "paywall" requires there to be a payment involved, which is not the case with NYTimes.

masnick 15 years ago |

I agree, but this may become more of a problem as time goes on: apparently paywalls are coming back into vogue.

Example is the NYT apparently re-introducing paywalls in 2011, at least according to this NPR story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1227770...

Here is a blog post about the economics of the NYT paywall: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/01/20/the-economi...

I haven't heard about this for a while, and it looks like the posts I found are from the beginning of this year. Does anyone know if the NYT is still doing this? I hope not...

meinhimmel 15 years ago |

A neat little trick that may work for you is to switch your user agent to the Google bot. Since they want their site to be indexed by it, sites sometimes will allow it.

Tichy 15 years ago |

I have the occasional problem with the NY Times, which I can usually remedy by opening the URL with a different browser. The NYT seems to require logins randomly.

araneae 15 years ago | |

Here's a better solution: install the BugMeNot extension for firefox. It logs you into NYT and other sites by providing the credentials. https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/6349

Tichy 15 years ago | | |

I've tried that years ago, but it never seemed to work very well. The accounts would tend to be invalidated too quickly.

eof 15 years ago |

I think the best we can do is ask that when submitting a story, the submitter makes an effort to make the content as easily accessible as possible.

tomjen3 15 years ago |

I have heard some complaints about this, but it tends to be on the NYT domain - which can be avoided by opening it in incognito mode.

olius 15 years ago |

well actually it exist quite a lot of great articles behind paywalls, and i would site obviously what is published on Harvard Business Review or similar like Rotman publications. A lot of educational and research libraries have still restricted access to their last new papers, reports and researches which usually are very useful to stay up front competitors, or find right up-to-date or future partners.