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Comment by khare_ashwini | Hacker News Reader

The "web" link allows you to access WSJ w/o any subscription.

The web link does not work for every HN user. WSJ always displays the paywall for certain geo-locations, even when Google is the referrer. This applies to Germany and multiple other countries.

Not sure that is strictly true. I live in Germany and the web link gives me WSJ with no pay wall.

Your comment sparked my interest. After playing around a bit, it seems Firefox users get the paywall while Chrome users do not.

I tried it too, same result. Very interesting.

Firefox has some built-in "tracking protection" that might not send referer headers.

Doesn't work for me and I hate this. When I click a link and get a paywall it's a very frustrating experience.

On a meta HN note, whenever a WSJ article gets submitted, invariably someone mentions the existence of the web link and the method in which to bypass the paywall. It's almost as if we are better served by having a bot that creates a comment informing users of the existence and purpose of this link in situations where the domain is known to have paywalls.

Click the [-] on the thread to collapse it, thank your overlords, and move on. Works every time.

Alternatively, pay for a damn subscription and stop moaning that the free lunch is over.

Its the newspapers who will realize that the free lunc his over when nobody needs their crap anymore.

Put up paywalls and dont even make it remotely easy to actually pay. Then bitch about you not having an account, still want you to click on a thousand facebook and twitter links and have ads that slow the site down to a standstill and what not.

Newspapers are really not having it easy huh. Throughout the web, you either run a subscription or monetize with ads. Newspapers do both and cant even hire an engineer who doesnt shit out a javascript turd that will never load.

> when nobody needs their crap anymore

I bet you wouldn't see WSJ articles on HN if this was the case.

Yet they keep showing up, paywall or no.

> Its the newspapers who will realize that the free lunc his over when nobody needs their crap anymore.

I'm just amazed that you can expect the 5,000 people at the Wall Street Journal to work for you for free, and then accuse them of pursuing a "free lunc".

found a misspell. ouch.

And invariably someone has to explain to that someone that the web link doesn't help. Still getting a paywall...

I'd love to see a bot.

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