Chrome Extension Gets You Past WSJ Paywall With One Click

From what I've read, rather quickly, they can block it but then they have to either block google or cloak their content (present different versions to GoogleBot and to the public which is not really allowed). So they choose whether to make the content a gateway accessible from Google's SERPs or to close it off.

It apparently needs to modify links on pages that link to WSJ.

You can expect the source easily enough by installing it and navigating to something like ~/.google/chrome/Extensions

I ran into this complaint as feedback from a user for a Chrome extension I'm developing that did something similar (inspected links for a certain kind of content, then modified the page in question).

I could add a whitelist, but since it's implemented in my own extension, it doesn't solve the trust problem. The fact that you can examine the source of extensions doesn't help much.

I'd love for there to be a built-into-chrome per-extension whitelist and blacklist, so that users could specify exactly which pages they give my extension permission to run on. That way they could easily use my extension on only the domains they want, and ensure that I'm not reading their webmail or scraping their bank account website or anything malicious.

The WSJ's paywall can be broken because they don't want to engage in cloaking and risk the wrath of Google, et al.

So, if this extension is ethically wrong, is it also ethically wrong to Google the title of the article and click on the Google result, thus subverting the paywall?

If the WSJ wants to really charge, that's their prerogative -- but that means no Google News or no search hits bringing people in. If they want to get more eyes on their articles, that means some people are going to get in without paying.

This is just a case of a company trying to have their cake and eat it too.