Ask HN: Is it ethical to bypass paywalls because I believe in free internet? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is it ethical to bypass paywalls because I believe in free internet?

6 pointsbehnamoh20 comments

I know many will disagree but I feel that stealing something because you feel you should not have to pay for it is absolutley unethical.

There is a completely different question around the ethics of charging for something like information but as I say that is a different question.

Put a second way, would it be unethical to derive a work from a gpl source and simply use whatever licence you wanted because you did not agree with the gpl requirements?

> I know many will disagree but I feel that stealing something because you feel you should not have to pay for it is absolutley unethical.

I feel I shouldn't have to pay for this quote.

I am not charging for it, so you may have it for free.

Sadly for you, that's immaterial. You do not have an ability to charge against my specific use.

Also, you have my sypmpathy for any way that copyright culture may have warped your understanding.

I don't follow your train of thought here. I am not charging for nor protecting my comments here in any manner.

I understand that explicitly as part of my participation here.

As such, I understand you are free to quote me without compensating me and doing so is ethical.

If however, this was my site and I decided to charge people for my wisdom then yes I would expect you to pay for it like everyone else

If you found a way to get it for free I would probably be unwilling and unable to stop you from stealing it and it would be unethical for you to do so.

Wanting something does not justify taking it from someone only willing to sell it.

Just as ignoring GPL requirements is unethical just because one feels that they are inconvenient (legalities aside as we are talking about ethics)

Not sure which line of yours applies to which line of mine.

Put a third and a fourth way, if my yard abuts a drive-in theater then am I ethically bound to draw the curtains when a movie is on so I don't see it without paying? If I drive through an area within range of a pirate radio station am I ethically bound to turn off the car radio to avoid accidentally stealing from the musicians whose music is being broadcast?

My ethical code says yes. Perhaps you feel differently.

If I live next to you and I discover that I can see a member of your family when they are getting undressed, are you suggesting it would be ethical to repeated watch or even record them in the nude? What if I shared those recording with others? Do you still feel that is ethical behavior?

I would regard your conduct in your examples as unethical but not analogous to my examples. Your conduct would amount to exfiltrating someone's private information that isn't intended for distribution, whereas my examples concern information someone intends to distribute, albeit selectively. Let such a person implement and fund his own dedicated distribution channel or find a business model that doesn't depend on commandeering a public resource. Throwing information into the ether and expecting to shake down whoever catches it seems unethical to me.

If a company says I can only read 5 articles a month and I delete cookies or block JS some might say that's unethical. What if a use my phone then, which has another 5 articles. Obviously the most ethical thing to do would be not to do either and keep a mental count of 5 articles per month.

For me, I'm not in a position to pay and likely never will, therefore I'm not 'lost revenue'

I don’t believe in a free Internet because I don’t think a good Internet can be free. I wish I could subscribe to Instagram if it meant all the crap ads would disappear. But I also don’t respect firewalls because I’m a hypocrite. I do try to mitigate this by funding sites online that could use the money, like Wikipedia way back when, or some blogs/newsletters

Hi. I want to give the following example. In the context of dentistry, the vast majority of information is not free. This information is mainly needed by doctors who want to develop. Mostly novice doctors want to develop. Only experienced doctors can find a good job. Experience is gained only by those who want to develop, but there is no money until you get experience))) I believe that all training data should be free! Definitely ethical!

I don't think your belief in a free internet changes whether its ethical.

Ethical or not, I think bypassing paywalls is a useful societal function because it help so signal to providers that their value proposition is out of whack. What's behind most paywalls is worth literally $0 to me, so the only way I would ever see it is to bypass the paywall.

I used to read the print copy of the economist, not because I couldn't access the articles for free but because it gave me a periodical with curatee articles I could sit and read (when covid started and that's all they could talk about, i cancelled my subscription, I don't need to pay for covid news).

I subscribe to spotify, but because I couldn't find the songs for free but because it's more convenient and gives them to me anywhere at a reasonable cost.

In the case of streaming services, there's an argument that they wouldn't exist if not for Napster et al and that companies would continue to try and rent seek by controlling distribution of content in a way that didn't satisfy consumer needs. The same is true for paywalls - bypassing them is an important forcing function towards a viable business model that delivers content in a way we want.

Is it ok to sneak into a concert?

Ok is pretty undefined here so sure.

There's an implied issue here that intangible transgressions tend to do tangible harm that is so serious, it needs rectification. I think people accept this notion without worthwhile evidence.

If one must sneak in or otherwise subvert the intentions of the provider then, it is unethical and the sneaker is aware that it is.

The question of tangible harm and restitution (if any) for that harm is a question separate from ethics.

A notion that harm is disconnected from ethics is an interesting one.

Hmm. The marginal cost of one more person sneaking into a concert audience is essentially $0. However, I bet YouTube for instance pays an eye-watering sum of money every year serving video to people with ad-blockers. (and by extension, the creators suffer from this too).

I believe that bypassing paywalls doesn't rise to the level of notably unethical behavior.

Also - it may be that your justification isn't relevant here.

I won’t get into the ethics of it, but it is impractical to pay for each individual website. Sticking my credit card in for WSJ, NYT, Economist, some random news site, Medium, Substack, it’s just too much.

The business needs to consolidate under one payment portal, and I’d pay a decent amount per year.

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