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Comment by jashkenas | Hacker News Reader

Sorry to hear that, Michael.

Subscription models are great, and paywalls are great.

What's not so great is creating an internet where if you use our Trusted Corporate Partner™ you're allowed to view a public webpage, and if you come from anywhere less privileged on the internet, you're not. That's not sustainable. Lest we fall into a vortex where you're only allowed to browse the public web by logging in through Facebook. I wouldn't want to be online in that world.

This isn't a complicated extension, and it doesn't do anything fancy to subvert any paywalls — and it's not going to. It simply reloads the page as if you had arrived via Google. I think that's a fair thing to do.

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I think the real "issue" here is that those paywalled content publishers want to get paid but also want the free advertising that comes with having a well indexed site.

It's a pretty interesting subject in my opinion because I can easily see arguments for both sides, and if we compare it to the real world we have the exact same "issue.

I can read an article that's on the newspaper's first page when it sits in the newsstand but I can't open it and look for any other articles without paying for the paper.

I think the real solution has to come in the form of a better subscription model. I usually get to paywalled sites wanting to read a single article so a subscription is a bit too much for me. If there was a way for me to get what I want by paying quickly, maybe using some sort of a federated payment platform (much like downloading apps doesn't require subscribing) I'd be more inclined to pay.

>> "If there was a way for me to get what I want by paying quickly, maybe using some sort of a federated payment platform (much like downloading apps doesn't require subscribing) I'd be more inclined to pay."

Isn't this what Flattr tried (and failed) to do?

Flattr is more about donations, not payments. As far as I know, you can't detect if the person has flattred your page.

  ... if you use our Trusted Corporate Partner™

No. Not like that. Basically, its Google saying publishes must do this or they won't send traffic their way (via search result / SEO)

Its not publishers saying use Google over Bing over Yahoo etc.

  Lest we fall into a vortex where you're only allowed 
  to browse the public web by logging in through Facebook

The other argument that this may hold water is similar exceptions when you come from social (Reddit, Twitter, FB, etc) where they often allow access. However not for the reasons you're suggesting. In that case its the publisher saying they don't want to cut them-self out of the conversation (who'd link to the NYT if it was alway a paywall or would immediately count against your monthly free views before you can determine whether you wanted to read it or not...). In such cases those exceptions are factored into the economics of whatever the 'free views' limit is.

  and it doesn't do anything fancy to subvert any 
  paywalls — and it's not going to

Really? You could make that argument. However the screenshots you choose for the extension in the WebStore are all sites that have paywalls or subscription requirements. So that last statement is being a big disingenuous.

   I think that's a fair thing to do

Makes sense from google's perspective. Why should they list sites that people can't access.

Listing sites people cannot access does sound like a bad user experience.

Who'd link to the NYT if it was always a paywall, indeed?

Of course I understand that the publishers don't want to cut themselves out of the conversation.

But why must "the conversation" be limited to powerful internet companies? Do we not converse about news articles in blog posts? Comment threads? Up and coming social platforms that don't have Facebooks media clout yet?

It's simply unfair to treat a visitor arriving at your site from Google differently to a visitor arriving at your site from anywhere else. It runs against the grain of the web. To that end, if I hadn't published this extension, someone else would have made it. If Google removes "Referer" privileges from Chrome extensions, someone will fork Chromium to allow them again. Let's build a better — a more fair — paywall.

>Let's build a better paywall.

and hasten the death of print journalism

I'm honestly fine with that.

Yes, please.

So publishers should either block traffic from search engines, or not have a paywall at all. Neither seems economically viable to me.

It would not be hard for Google to append one-time, time-limited tokens to SERP links to get searchers from Google to NYT (or other big publishers). Google would just need to provide an invite-only API for the publishers to check the tokens against in real time. At their scale this would be pretty trivial. This would have the neat effect of breaking your extension, and locking in special treatment.

Google would not bother to do this right now, because the referrer trick largely benefits Google (the typical advice is "just Google the headline"), and is not widely abused. But if people start widely circumventing both Google and the paywall (with something like your extension), then the interests will align and Google and the publishers will act together.

Google executives have said repeatedly and publicly that they want existing news organizations to survive and feel a responsibility to help them do so.

So your proposal if to make Google say "hmm, I don't really think you searched for that, so the link is going to have missing content"? Otherwise how are they gonna differentiate between someone searching and finding the article "by accident" vs on purpose? Sounds like a crappy user experience.

> No. Not like that. Basically, its Google saying publishes must do this or they won't send traffic their way (via search result / SEO)

Links published --anywhere, not just Google-- for content behind paywalls are called ads.

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