All the Paywalls

[filly]

The internet has become a place for people with money to get access to important news and thinkers. I have a few subscriptions to major papers, and one to The Atlantic. These are not cheap. There are others I would like to subscribe to but Jeez! Not paying for Rupert Murdoch's WSJ, although it has some important news stories from time to time. Not paying for Bloomberg either. So it's a game of seeing how much you can discern from watching cable news shows that read out portions of articles (of course cable news is pay-to-play too).

Now we have the advent of stuff like Substack. Each author there sells subscriptions. My favorite guy on Twitter, Aaron Rupar, got axed by Vox recently. He has a Substack. I'd like to support him because he has an adorable baby to feed and he's smart and funny. But where do we draw the line?

I get it that "newspapers" need income, but I've always thought it would serve the public interest if there were a consortium of papers where you could pay a flat fee and get access to x number of publications.

Sad!

[raison de arizona]

I get it that "newspapers" need income, but I've always thought it would serve the public interest if there were a consortium of papers where you could pay a flat fee and get access to x number of publications.

Sad!

I would LOVE to see that. These subs are expensive enough that I only do a few as well, as much as I want to support the reporting. NYT alone is costing us $410/yr, it gets out of hand really quick. We've started downsizing the ones we don't read *as much*, which is a bummer, but the budget doesn't like all these subs.

[Foggy]

I think you can get most of them free from your local library. I did that for a while, and I'll admit it is more work than usual. I decided to support the Washington Post, which has done a creditable job of covering the TFA administration, but not the NY Times, which I consider to be a right-wing rag.

I won't support my local paper. Long story short, they turned down a story I brought, directly, face to face with one of the VPs at a restaurant downtown, about kickbacks and shameful overpricing in the funeral flower business, back when ol' Wifehorn and I sold posies. I gave that man the goods to take down a dozen dirty players, if he'd done any investigation. But because the florists in this town advertise in the local paper, and might pull their ads if'n the paper was to expose what a pack of crooks they were, the story never happened.

I might support the LA Times. I always read that when I lived in SoCal.

[RTH10260]

It's a

I can understand that the print media wants to charge for their work, and I understand that ad blockers are undermining their online revenue stream. The question is, what's the right price.

There also seems to be some legal issue looming in the background for certain jurisdiction, as of giving away content for free anonym versus subsctiption. I understand that knowing your customer formally by some email address clears the issue in offering a "free subscription".

[John Thomas8]

Coupla years ago I stopped and took a look at how I was spending on-line for access.

I was gobsmacked by how much all those little access fees added up, and nuked the ENTIRE lot of 'em. Let things settle down and found out I was saving nearly three hundred farking dollars a month by whacking it all.

I'm back up to YouTube premium and $35/month spread across n-1 Patreon posters. And am happier.

[raison de arizona]

Coupla years ago I stopped and took a look at how I was spending on-line for access.

I was gobsmacked by how much all those little access fees added up, and nuked the ENTIRE lot of 'em. Let things settle down and found out I was saving nearly three hundred farking dollars a month by whacking it all.

I'm back up to YouTube premium and $35/month spread across n-1 Patreon posters. And am happier.

I want to say there is no way I am spending that much, but I'm a bit too worried to begin totaling it up quite yet.

[John Thomas8]

Coupla years ago I stopped and took a look at how I was spending on-line for access.

I was gobsmacked by how much all those little access fees added up, and nuked the ENTIRE lot of 'em. Let things settle down and found out I was saving nearly three hundred farking dollars a month by whacking it all.

I'm back up to YouTube premium and $35/month spread across n-1 Patreon posters. And am happier.

I want to say there is no way I am spending that much, but I'm a bit too worried to begin totaling it up quite yet.

I had no idea, either. I'd see something I wanted to read, think ya, $3/month is nothing, let's go with it. And it went on for 7-8 years and I completely failed to pay attention.

That won't happen again.

[Foggy]

Here's a possible solution, but talk to me.

1) I open a GoFundMeAndSendMeAPileOfMoney and collect a very reasonable 2.786 trillion dollars.

2) I purchase - in the name of Fogbow - all the paywalls, with a reserve fund in case we find more.

3) I post the username and password here on the forum, hidden so only registered members can see it. The username, of course, will be foggy@thefogbow.com. Is an organized group allowed to use a paywall? Lawyers, chime in here.

4) if you need to crack a paywall, have at it, and most of us (but not lurkers) will be able to see it.

My staff informs me this will never work, but are they lawyers? No, they are not.

Stupid staff.

[Foggy]

My staff informs me that they aren't stupid, just cautious. They made me write this.

[Mrich]

WaPo has a "gift" feature for most articles. (I posted about this in August if it sound familiar.)

The "gift" is valid for 14 days and there is no limit to how many clicks it will get. A subscriber can gift up to 10 articles per calendar month. From the way I read it, I could "gift" the article then post the link here, and anyone should have access to it for 14 days.

So, for anyone who wants access to an WaPo article but has hit their freebie limit, if you PM me with the link I am willing to gift the article until I reach the limit for the month.

[tek]

My staff informs me that they aren't stupid, just cautious. They made me write this.

Your staff has been busy lately.

Just sayin'

[keith]

Here's a possible solution, but talk to me.

1) I open a GoFundMeAndSendMeAPileOfMoney and collect a very reasonable 2.786 trillion dollars.

2) I purchase - in the name of Fogbow - all the paywalls, with a reserve fund in case we find more.

3) I post the username and password here on the forum, hidden so only registered members can see it. The username, of course, will be foggy@thefogbow.com. Is an organized group allowed to use a paywall? Lawyers, chime in here.

4) if you need to crack a paywall, have at it, and most of us (but not lurkers) will be able to see it.

My staff informs me this will never work, but are they lawyers? No, they are not.

Stupid staff.

Well, IANAL, but I would think they would get curious if your account was logging in from a hundred different IP addresses from all over the world simultaneously.

[tek]

Well, IANAL, but I would think they would get curious if your account was logging in from a hundred different IP addresses from all over the world simultaneously.

FoggyVPN!

[neonzx]

My staff informs me that they aren't stupid, just cautious. They made me write this.

I'm sure most of these paywall systems are smart enough to know that you cant be in multiple states/countries in a matter of minutes. (IP addresses) They could lock-out the account(s) automagically.

ETA: I share a top tier Netflix account with two other households-- one of which is in Brasil. Netflix knows sharing goes on and they announced a couple months ago that they are going to slowly but gently clamp down on that...

[Lani]

I pay for the Washington Post. Originally, I got hooked by a Swiss fogbow guy who gave me several months of free reading. Once that ended, WaPo gave me a year's subscription for $40. I lost track of time and wound up paying $150 for the next year. So then I removed my credit card info. Recently, that year came to an end, and I didn't resubscribe. Presto! WaPo gave me another year for $40.

I get a NYT briefing every day. It's free. I don't want to give the NYT any money.

I also get a John Hopkins briefing 4 to 5 days a week for free. It's mostly about the coronavirus, and it's very informative. Currently, it's addressing the possibility of a dangerous winter.

Through September and October, cases declined week over week but then plateaued just in the last two weeks—and the baseline remains higher than it was back in the summer.

“That’s worrisome for two reasons,” Nuzzo says, “One, because we like to see the declines continue, but also because where we’re stalling is at a level of weekly case numbers that are still well above what we saw at the lower periods at the end of June and early July.” Nuzzo also says that while hospitalizations and deaths aren’t increasing, that’s because these numbers tend to be “lagging indicators” that may tick up in the weeks to come.

Another concern: This could be a more typical year when it comes to flu and colds, Andy Pekosz said in a recent Q&A, which could mean hospitals may become stretched between COVID and flu patients. Already, thanks to the relaxing of public health interventions like masking and distancing, there have been surges of rhinovirus cases, colds, and RSV, “so the next thing we expect to see is the flu.”