[1] http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/text.jsp?file_id=295166 Article 11, http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ShowResults.jsp?lang=en&trea... The signing parties.
The sites that I skip are those that require that I register before even reading an article.
Are you a lawyer who's defended such cases, or a prosecutor who's charged them? Then I might trust you. I would also as credible evidence accept a reputable media report of a person imprisoned for circumventing a cookie-enforced paywall.
It's good practice to clear your cookies and switch browsers occasionally. Do so without fear of imprisonment whenever you wish.
(Also, most people here can afford the relevant site subscriptions, so that's another avenue through which they can access such submissions, when they are the best source for a story.)
There almost never is a minimum scale defined in actual implementations.
There have been several attempts to sue people in my country, usually settled before any final judgment, for being instrumental in copyright infringement, even if that and the actual infringement occured on limited, loss-incuring scale.
I live in the EU, so every web page I visit is required to be logged by ISPs for 6-24 months. Clearing cookies does nothing.
I'm more than willing to bet that your law says too that circumventing technical measures is illegal and when done on purpose a criminal act. Admitting to using the privacy mode of your browser to circumvent the paywall is admitting to a crime in many jurisdictions. Sometimes with optional prison terms, otherwise fines that will eventually turn into prison time if they're not paid on time, so prison is certainly an option for using the privacy mode to access NYT. Not likely to be prosecuted, but a crime nonetheless.
That would be cool! NYT using the ISP logs to control the paywall :)
Maybe an addition to http could enable the sending of relevant log data with each request?
The future is here.. soon