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Comment by holistio | Hacker News Reader

This is going to be a shameless plug here.

I'm also frustrated by how paywalls work, having to endlessly subscribe to yet another newspaper or newsletter, just because you want to read one article.

But this approach is... stealing. When it comes to big media like the NYT, it might not feel like it is, but at the end of the day, it's people doing the background research, writing the content, editing, etc.

This is _not_ the solution.

Our alternative in the making offers a legal, fair alternative: buy and sell content by the piece.

It's available at https://vernus.one

If you have a blog or newsletter, or if you're a journalist, I'm happy to help in setting up your publication and start earning in a transparent manner.

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Disputing the space and then resolving the mess is a tried and true tactic in this industry.

Just because this site isn’t directly paying the content providers now doesn’t mean they won’t in the future. Providing it free, even with ambiguous legality, can allow them to build enough of a following to give them leverage in future negotiations.

It's not directly not paying, it's not paying at all.

I don't see how this is different from disputing the banking sector by conducting a heist.

I agree with your take, but pitching your own solution as part of it significantly lowers the appeal of your comment, at least for me.

Why? This is HN no? The entire point of this community is to provide technology solutions (mostly through companies). If any place should welcome this, it should be HN.

You are right of course. I think it was something in the wording that turned me off. It was an instinctive reaction that I now regret.

I couldn't really care less.

If you look at the middle part of the domain between news. and .com, it might remind you that this is a community of people building stuff, learning to sell it, improving upon the feedback.

I don't really see how pitching a legal solution in a thread below the pitch of an obviously illegal, or at least unethical one is problematic.

Fair enough. It just felt salesy, that’s all I‘m saying.

> I don't see how this is different from disputing the banking sector by conducting a heist.

Let's leave aside this logical fallacy; we're all adults here.

Buying music on iTunes became popular because it was easier than pirating the music. You could buy individual songs for less than 99 cents (you still can do that [1])

News outlets have the option of selling content by the piece (as you suggest) instead of forcing you to go into a monthly or annual subscription you don't need because you just want to read 1 or 2 articles per month from a particular newspaper.

However, they don't want to do so. And because of that, pirating the content becomes again more convenient; like in the pre-iTunes years.

Your idea of using an intermediary service to get that content isn't the solution. I'm not interested in a third party profiling me based on the content I read online.

Edited to add reference: [1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/109338

There's no profiling going on, we take a cut of the sale price and that is it. But I understand your concern and will think hard about how we could make this more obvious. I'm not sure if it's a general concern or it applies more to people like us.

Also, I assume you read stuff on Substack, Medium, Reddit, etc. Definitely so on a third party commonly known as HN.

Re iTunes: it's not about the will of the news outlets. It is impractical for them to offer a model which sells by the piece. And the most prominent cause is banal: payment fees are too high a percentage on what would be a typical price for a single piece of content.

Keeping a credit balance solves that, but keeping a credit balance at every outlet is just as bad as monthly subs.

An aggregator can solve this issue.

Too salesy

My comment or the site? If the former, I acknowledge that, I got a bit triggered by YACTS (yet another content theft service). If the latter, I'm genuinely curious and happy to make changes to our copy.

Paywallskip seems to stealsy to me FWIW.

Can I get my money back if it turns out that some NYT article was outright lies, probably already paid for by some undisclosed shady entity?

I wish you could. I'd like Vernus to champion indie journalism, mainstream media is dying before our eyes anyway.

Do you get your money back if you go to the store and buy some new food/fruit/snack you don't like the taste of?

No, you throw it away, and probably won't buy it again. If you don't like NYT, don't buy from them.

If NYT is like an avocado for you, sometimes ripe and delicious, sometimes unripe, sometimes rotten, you get to decide how often you're gonna buy avocados, or if you'll develop your own methods of avocado testing before buying to increase your odds. In no case do you get to take the avocado skin back to the store asking for a refund.

Trader Joe’s will give you your money back if you buy something and don’t like it.

I think the original question has some logic.

If the content is untruthful, it isn't in analogy with a fruit that you don't like, it's in analogy with a rotten fruit.

I expect a refund if a rotten fruit is delivered.

Really hard to implement with content.

Perhaps a simpler analogy, you see a new bag/flavour of chips in the store, "super crunchy" "delicious", you buy it, go home, tastes horrible, barely crunchy, do you get to take it back and get your money back?

Yep! Local stores are 'happy' to refund since they tend to value customers. Megacorps... not so much.

Misleading advertising is so common, I wouldn't really fret over it.

If it says super crunchy and you assess the crunchiness is merely average, well, that's your perception.

But if it says it's paprika flavoured and it turns out to be sauerkraut, you gotta bring it back to the store.

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