News Publishers Take Paywall-Blocker 12ft.io Offline (theverge.com)
- Reference: 0178404826
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/07/17/2029207/news-publishers-take-paywall-blocker-12ftio-offline
- Source link: https://www.theverge.com/news/709209/news-media-alliance-12ft-io-takedown-paywall
> The News/Media Alliance, a trade association behind major news publishers, [1]announced that it has " [2]successfully secured" the removal of 12ft.io , a website that helped users bypass paywalls online. The trade association says 12ft.io's webhost took down the site on July 14th "following the News/Media Alliance's efforts." 12ft.io -- or 12 Foot Ladder -- also allowed users to view webpages without ads, trackers, or pop-ups by disguising a user's browser as a web crawler, giving them unfettered access to a webpage's contents. Software engineer Thomas Millar says he created the site when he realized "8 of the top 10 links on Google were paywalled" when doing research during the pandemic. [...]
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> In its announcement, News/Media Alliance says 12ft.io "offered illegal circumvention technology" that allowed users to access copyrighted content without paying for it. The organization adds that it will take "similar actions" against other sites that let users get around paywalls. The News Media Alliance recently called Google's AI Mode "theft." (Like many chatbots, Google's AI Mode eliminates the need to visit a website, starving publishers of the pageviews they need to be compensated for their work.)
"Publishers commit significant resources to creating the best and most informative content for consumers, and illegal tools like 12ft.io undermine their ability to financially support that work through subscriptions and ad revenue," News/Media Alliance president and CEO Danielle Coffey said in the [3]press release . "Taking down paywall bypassers is an essential part of ensuring we have a healthy and sustainable information ecosystem."
[1] https://www.newsmediaalliance.org/takedown-of-12ftio/
[2] https://www.theverge.com/news/709209/news-media-alliance-12ft-io-takedown-paywall
[3] https://www.newsmediaalliance.org/takedown-of-12ftio/
What legal action can you take? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bypassing the lacking paywall filter simply by changing your user agent, or, disabling JavaScript, or using the inspector and deleting the node (yes that sometimes works), doesn't constitute any kind of theft, your browser can already do all of that. Which means a website should expect all of that by design. If you really want to design a "paywall" we've had them for decades, just require a user to login, and until they do show nothing, and once you do, you'll destroy most of your user base.
The claim that the information and reporting is so good, that it warrants a paywall, is stupid. If it's so good, ask for donations and support, and prove the work is good, by having people offer to pay, out of being impressed. Paywalls give the impression that the information / reporting behind them is low quality, and you're only hiding the work because it can't stand on its own.
Information wants to be lobotomized for profit. (Score:2)
> "Taking down paywall bypassers is an essential part of ensuring we have a healthy and sustainable information ecosystem."
I feel like we've lost some fundamental understanding of what information is, if the profit is more important than the information. I get that people want to be paid, but there's a big disconnect when things are set up to be free to crawl, then these same companies bitch to high heaven when the AI companies crawl, and pitch a bitch if a user manages to access the content via the same methods the crawlers do.
Something is broken in this process, and I'm not convinced its the web or the underlying technology t
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't it obvious?
The plebes must pay, that is all
13ft (Score:2)
I'll just leave this here:
[1]https://github.com/wasi-master... [github.com]
[1] https://github.com/wasi-master/13ft
Re: (Score:2)
I'll stop you at docker.
Re: (Score:2)
Ignore this fool
> docker run --name 13ft -it -d -p 5000:5000 ghcr.io/wasi-master/13ft:latest
Now it's running on your system. Lets all collectively throw our middle finger at the news alliance
Re: (Score:2)
cool. vive la résistance! though it's much simpler to just ignore paywalled sites. this is not a hill to die on.
Adware, malware, etc (Score:3)
The problem with all of this has much to do with the ad networks themselves. If the ads weren't intrusive and didn't screw up the page layout (meaning they obeyed the size restrictions and placement of the ad spaces by developers), it wouldn't be as much of a problem. Couple that with the ads sometimes containing some form of malware and the inability to dismiss popups easily, and you have a recipe for disaster: I visit example.com and it pops up an ad that I dismiss, but by sheer coincidence it's got scripting in it and it installs some kind of malware. I get the computer disinfected, and I go blame example.com because that's how I got it. The people who run example.com will come back and say that they buy their ads from GenericAdNetwork, so you need to talk to them. I then contact GenericAdNetwork, and they say that it's not their fault because they're just a distributor. It turns into a finger-pointing and red herring-chasing session, and you never learn who actually created the malicious ad. Someone needs to be responsible for these things... I don't care if it's example.com or GenericAdNetwork... one of them has to do some kind of filtering and/or vetting of the ads. Until then, browsers like Brave and a pi-Hole are my friends.
The Streisand effect plus the Whack-A-Mole game (Score:2)
I did not even know that site existed. I'll probably find out about its replacement.
Fair is fair (Score:2)
Then we should be able to have pay-walled sites taken down/offline.
anti-malware site taken offline by cartel (Score:2)
That's the story.
"illegal circumvention technology" ? (Score:2)
> News/Media Alliance says 12ft.io "offered illegal circumvention technology"
When the fuck did setting the User-Agent string on a browser become "illegal circumvention technology"?
These fuckers at this "News/Media Alliance" better be careful how they label their "news" in the future, as anything not actual news from them "infiltrating" into my browser will have serious consequences for them!
Free to Crawl not Free to Read? (Score:3)
Wait what?