The New York Times‘s looming mighty paywall, which is live in Canada and goes operational in the U.S. in five days, has sprung some leaks–a few of them self-inflicted. As Times readers across the web have scrambled to find ways around and through the wall, the Gray Lady has responded. Here are the loopholes we’ve heard of so far:
1. The Javascript hack
The loophole: Joshua Benton at Nieman Journalism Lab noticed the other day that, as he put it, “when you reach your 20-article limit and try to read more, the contraband article actually loads just fine in your browser”–it’s merely obscured by an overlay urging you to pony up. The overlay was just “a little CSS and Javascript,” he noted, and a simple browser extension could be used to strip the bit of policing code. Then, Canadian coder David Hayes did just that, putting out something called “NYTClean,” a simple button that you can find here and drag into your browser bar.
The response: Forbes asked the Times about “NYTClean,” and they responded through a spokeswoman: “As we have said previously, as with any paid product, we expect that
there will be some percentage of people who will find ways around our
digital subscriptions. We will continue to monitor the situation but
plan no changes to the programming or paywall structure in advance of
our global launch on March 28th.”
2. The Bing exception
The loophole: In its initial announcement, the Times said that while it would still, of course, allow people to access linked stories through Google, “[t]here will, however, be a five-article limit a day for people who visit the site from Google.” Just Google? What, people began wondering, about Bing? Initially, this seemed like a leg up for the Microsoft search engine underdog.
