Hank Green was recently quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying he really doesn't like paywalls, the irony of course is that this article is behind a paywall so very few people will ever see it. Youtube is now rolling out paid subscription channels which means that paywalls are now going to be all over Youtube, which really sucks. Paywalls pretty much kill sharing and sharing is what the internets are all about.

There are many people like myself who want to be able to support creators we love in a way that is easy, magnifies awesome, while minimizing world suck, but also that still facilitates sharing. Flattr is a service designed to support creators on the web. I think that giving micro-donations through Flattr to Youtube creators I love may be one solution to this issue. If you share things on the web I would suggest giving Flattr a try it's free and you may get a lot more support than you might expect. Yea for creators, boo for paywalls! Your thoughts?

A friend of mine who is a web dev at Crain's announced on Facebook today that Crain's articles that are linked on Reddit will no longer have a paywall for the first view.

Just thought I'd share.

After seeing so many posts about North Korea following Kim Jong Un's barrage of threats, I thought I'd do another AMA in case there's any interest--my previous ones had a lukewarm reception to say the least. My background: I was a professor of literature in Seoul for three years, and I volunteered at an organization that supported North Korean defectors living in South Korea.

You can read about me here: http://chronicle.com/article/Growing-Pains-for-Foreign/136453/ (paywall) and here: http://thethreewisemonkeys.com/2013/02/11/lost-in-translation-the-case-of-the-medieval-professor-and-the-ivory-korean-tower/ (non-paywall).

While I don't know all the details about the North Korean military, their capabilities, or how real these current threats are, I do have some insight from what former soldiers told me and about Korean culture in general--both in the North and South.

Edit: Time for me to sign off--thanks for the questions; I hope I delivered!

Usually deleting the proper <form> or <div> node from the page source completely neutralizes website paywalls.

In a city near me, a dozen or so portals are located in a local privately-owned paid-access botanical garden. An Ingress player works at the facility, and is able to grant free access to his team, but access costs $12 for members of the opposition. Behind this paywall, his team has set up multiple L7+ portals - the only ones in the region - which our team cannot access without paying, but which his team can access for free.

Am I right that this kind of sucks? Perhaps more to the point, is this a violation of the portal guidelines? What course of action, if any, would you recommend?

FoxFi Software crippled their own program. It updates to crippleware, (warning if you dont have auto-updates, dont update!) and now FoxFi times out, meaning it turns itself off every 20 mins.

Then it asks you to buy the pay version. The Paywall is $7. I use FoxFi and it has been useful and transparent. It works without root (tho I have root).

The update of last weekend (Sat Nov 17) changed everything. FoxFi now disconnects every 20 minutes and offers you a chance to buy it for $7. There --it's disconnected while I was writing this--.

It was a surprise to find it crippled into nagware and within their rights but... If I buy it will they change it again? How do I know? I bought the pro version of a recording app only to find that it wouldnt work in Canada since I couldnt connect to the internet there to pass their paranoid theft check for each use. H8.

• I think this is my opportunity to find out about the alternatives, just to educate myself. I've had some experience of buying an app and being "ehh" about it afterwards. FoxFi has been excellent so far tho one reviewer reported disaster that happened only after purchasing the new model. Then it's bought forever. ^{Edit: I just found out that FoxFi Pay will not/does not support Jellybean so I would be buying a deadend program that won't work on my new Nexus. The price is for old tech use only.:( Just guessing that they will charge again for a Jellybean version.}

So what other apps have you used for wifi tether, needing root or not needing root. Have you found any limitations?

Thanks in advance.

The Dispatch had an issue with printing presses today and it delayed delivery for almost everyone. So they're taking down their paywall for today.

I used to use AzCentral all the time for local news, but once they announced the paywall and did the shitty redesign, I have found I am going there less and less.

When I want news about my old hometown I'm frustrated when I find a link to the DMN with its paywall. But actually few people link to it due to the paywall. I remember when it was the leading opinion maker (although I preferred the Times Herald). I wonder if the paywall has made it even less relevant than a typical paper (such as Hearst's San Antonio Express News or FTW's Star Telegram.)

As most of you probably know, Omaha.com has put a paywall in place which limits non-subscribers to reading only 25 of their low quality articles a month.

Fortunately, instead of doing something smart like blocking by IP address or some other unique footprint, they use browser cookies.

All most people need to do to get around the paywall is use incognito or private browsing mode in their browsers or regularly delete their cookies.

For more advanced users, if you configure your browser to block cookies from ppjol.com and ui.ppjol.com (these are the paywall cookies) , that paywall popup should never bother you again.

Edit: If you use an ad blocking extension, you might be able to configure that to remove the popup. http://sumtips.com/2011/08/block-onion-paywall.html

After 20 articles, NYT does not allow access to articles and asks you to buy a digital subscription.

Step 1: Reflection: Remember that their strategy allows for people to go around their paywall if they are resourceful enough because the NYT isn't actually interested in trading readership for money. They just want money if you are willing to pay.

Step 2: click the url at the top of your browser, e.g. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/how-exercise-may-keep-alzheimers-at-bay/?src=me&ref=general&gwh=6D0266AADBBA488CFCDD272256EE7CE7

Step3: delete the question mark and everything after it, and resubmit the link. i.e. turn the above link into http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/how-exercise-may-keep-alzheimers-at-bay/ and follow it

/Profit

In Chrome: ctrl+shift+n + nyt.com = paywall gone.

*Article at NewsAndTech: * http://www.newsandtech.com/news/article_5e3596ce-bc68-11e0-86c3-001cc4c002e0.html

I'm an employee of Lee who has made arguments against the "paywall" from the very beginning. My reasons include...

• Our sites are already unattractive enough as it is, and offer little value to existing print-edition customers.

• We sell local advertising on the basis of exposure (e.g. "Your add will receive 30,000 views a month in our 'Sports' section!") and the numbers of our most-viewed sections will now tank as a result of requiring people to pay after 15 articles. In turn, my department's revenue will also drop substantially.

• Rather than taking suggestions from the people who actually work with the websites, it was simply decided that this is what we're doing, and it's non-negotiable.

The company who sold this to Lee, PressPlus (a subsidary of RR Donnelley) essentially sold us a bottle of snake oil, because the system relies entirely on JavaScript, which if blocked, disables the "paywall" entirely.

Disabling the Lee paywall in Google Chrome (All MT Sites):

• Click the wrench icon in the upper-right corner, and chose 'Options'

• Click 'Under the Hood' on the left, then click the 'Content Settings' button

• On the 'JavaScript' section, you can leave the "Allow all sites to run JavaScript" selection, then click the 'Manage Exceptions' button

• Add the following two entries to the "Pattern" field, with 'Block' in the dropdown box:

  [*.].ppjol.com

  [*.].ppjol.net

• Close the 'Options' tab - You're done! No more paywall at any of the Montana Lee newspaper sites.

Disabling the Lee paywall in Firefox (All MT Sites):

• Install "BlockSite" from the Mozilla Add-ons website (Just click the green 'Add to Firefox' button, then allow the add-on to install.)

• Restart Firefox when prompted

• Click the 'Tools' menu, then choose 'Add-Ons' (or in Firefox version 4+, click the orange Firefox menu in the upper-left, then choose 'Add-ons')

• Click 'Extensions', then click 'BlockSite' and then 'Options'.

• On the "BlockSite Preferences" window, click the 'Add' button to add each of the following (without the initial "http://" value):

  *.ppjol.com

  *.ppjol.net

• Click the 'OK' button at the bottom of the "BlockSite Preferences" window, quit Firefox entirely, and then open Firefox again.

• You're done! No more paywall at any of the Montana Lee newspaper sites.

Disabling the Lee paywall in Internet Explorer (All MT Sites):

• Instructions forthcoming. For now, get Google Chrome or Firefox.

Enjoy!

I realize registration is free, but it's absurd to think I need to give you my username and password just to read the news. I'll just go elsewhere for the same story and no headache.