https://torrentfreak.com/bypass-paywalls-clean-shut-down-for-dmca-anti-circumvention-violations-240820/
Bypass Paywalls Clean, a popular browser extension that does exactly what its name suggests, has been shut down along with 3,879 forks.
FYI, the repo is not DMCAd yet, only the download URL which moved to gitflic.
Hosting on the github was never going to work. This needs hoisting on something like a gitea behind an anonymized host which ignores dmca
Only problem of hosting in a russian site, is that it's going to raise red flags for many people, causing them to avoid it.
Yeah, I have Russia and a few other countries blocked on my network. That is a no-go for me personally.
Yes, I agree. I found this over the weekend, and immediately backed out and scanned my computer. I just figured it had been compromised.
That mostly reeks of Classic Americacentrism. When a software is in a US site, it's "good" but subject to DMCA. When it's in a Russian site, suddenly it's All Malware (Always Has Been)?
I wish there were some quality news media where readers are willing to pay.
All these perverted "we have a right to our revenue even though nobody wants to pay for our shitty product" assholes can go home.
The problem is that I don't want to only read news from one source. I also don't want to pay 15 different news subscriptions.
If the same organization that shut down this repo would spend the time and money coming out with a joint account that was reasonably priced, people wouldn't resort to piracy.
But nope. Each paper needs their own subscribers.
It's like going to buy a car, getting to the car store, ahem, dealership, and finding they only have one brand of car. What the fuck is this? Let me see all the brands. It's 2024, where's our car stores?
Before I start paying for it I need 1. quality news media 2. journalists are paid instead of CEOs getting millions 3. no op eds from far right radicals.
I'd go so far as to say no op eds at all. If I'm paying for news, I want factual, high quality, ideally unbiased news, not some chucklefuck's opinion. I can get some chucklefuck's opinion all over the internet for free. (Case in point: You're getting it right now, for free, by reading this comment.)
I'm on board with this. If it is newsworthy for some reason, factual reporting would be to describe what they said instead of giving a platform to say whatever. Perhaps with (legitimate, fact-based, not just "bothsidesing") commentary on disagreeing viewpoints.
And then it's a steep dropoff... Maybe ten newspapers with more than 1m subscribers.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/785919/worldwide-number-of-digital-newspaper-subscribers/
Still would not change the fact that I literally cannot afford it. But I guess being informed about what is happening in the world is not something poor people should be entitled to.
Nonsense. Newspapers have always come with a price tag. Nothing special about that.
I don't know anything about your situation, and I truly don't need details, but if you think you can't afford access to any news outlet, I don't think you're trying hard enough.
Since you're apparently too poor to access any way to entertain or inform yourself, I'm guessing you've had ample time to mull over solutions to this problem, and I'm eager to learn what an ideal solution would look like from your perspective.
Are you cool with paying for your news in exchange for your data/ads? Is there part of the editorial process we could remove to save money? Maybe we don't need fact checkers and should just assume that journalists know what they're talking about?
I'm not sure how we simultaneously provide free journalism and ensure that those journalists have enough to eat themselves, but I share in your convictions that democratizing information is imperative.
From where I sit, it seems like news organizations have moved away from showing ads for revenue to some extent, so the only option we have is to include news in our monthly budget and support journalists as much as we can.
but if you think you can't afford access to any news outlet, I don't think you're trying hard enough.
Well, I can neither do magic, nor work, so I'm not sure what you're expecting me to do. lol My budget is state limited, so I have to prioritize where I spent it. And considering that it doesn't suffice front and center, I simply cannot pay 15 bucks or whatever for some sort of subscription, especially not for just one single website. Nowadays everyone asks for their 15 bucks of service fee and if I had to pay for each and every single one of them I'd have to pay more than what my monthly budget looks like.
I don't have a solution for the capitalist issue, but selling user data is surely not it. Generally, I think news should be freely accessible to everyone, as it is a core foundation of our democracies. Some countries have state or public funded papers, but not all of them and most people are not linking to those exclusively, assuming they even cover a given topic.
being informed about what is happening in the world is not something poor people should be entitled to
Radio service is free, and in its most simple form, one can be built with supplies at home and use no power. You just need some enameled copper wire, a razor blade, and a safety pin.
Not using a hard paywall is silly, no sympathy there. Some sympathy for when your paywalled content has been crawled for. Though not much - in this age where making copies has never been easier using force is all they can do to impose their wish of artificial scarcity.