Is that significantly different from viewing google's cached result of their legitimate access? The result is the same.
The law says "authorized access" and the WSJ authorized Google to access their content in order to index it. The WSJ did not authorize that content to be presented, for free, to you, an end user, necessarily. I don't know which way a court would rule on it, but it's definitely not black-and-white.
Sure, it's technically similar, but the court doesn't care. The court doesn't care if the law makes no technical sense, because it's a law, not a program.
In other words, yes, the WSJ does intend to only give Google access to their content, and not the general public.
But no, the WSJ has not "authorized" Google by anything more official than a bank telling their security guards to let anyone into the vault who is wearing a blue t-shirt.
So yeah, I agree with you, there is a lot of conflation of technical means and the law, but we also shouldn't be granting to the WSJ that they are doing any real "authorizing" here, beyond wishing it and hoping it stays true.