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Comment by mitkok | Hacker News Reader

Another article behind paywall, thanks very much for submitting. I hope you got paid for the link.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9795718#up_9796231 : "we don't ban paywalled sites [because] (a) there are standard workarounds for most paywalls, and (b) banning the WSJ, NYT, New Yorker, Economist, etc. would diminish the quality of HN."

Usually there are other sources for these stories on non-paywalled site. I'm curious as to whether the HN users who upvote these stories actually pay WSJ for access.

"...actually pay WSJ for access" - or use the Google search technique to get access, which I just verified works for me. (That is, copy&paste the headline into a Google search and follow the first link to the unrestricted article.)

I'm well aware you can use google to get around it. However I think it's hypocritical for people here to upvote WSJ instead of ad-supported news sites, then post comments saying things like "would you prefer to have adverts?" and "how are journalists supposed to make a living?" if they are actually using google to avoid paying for those services themselves.

Yep, it takes two seconds to get around these paywalls and should be an easy task for anyone who is good with computers, which ought to cover the entire demographic of this site.

Of course I'm aware of that, it's the reasons behind why people are posting WSJ links rather than the likes of techcrunch that I'm curious about (see my comment above).

You said upvote. I can see being curious about the people who actually post them, and I'd wonder the same thing myself.

This is News Corp now.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

but, how?

They remove paywall when visitor comes from google search results, so if you want to read something - just put URL into google search and you get to read it for free.

Otherwise they either won't get indexed at all or breach google policy that google bot should see same content as the user coming from search results.

Results to paywalled sites served through Google News tend to be un-paywalled even on articles that are usually locked down. I can't say for certain this is the case for all, but it certainly is for the FT.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/greece-set-to-default-on-17...

Basically says the same

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