[firewolf34]

Now, I'm all for not having to deal with their annoying paywall tactics bullcrap, but I'm wondering, is using archive.org as a way to get around paywalls like WSJ's an abuse? I'm concerned less for their profit and more for the fact that we might get archive.org hit with cease-and-desist's or cause archive.org to have to foot larger bandwidth costs when they're a really good service that's important for the long-term of the internet. I see a lot of people do it, though, so wasn't sure if there's some sort of blind-eye going on.

[projektfu]

Archive.is (Archive.today, etc.) is not Archive.org. They already do get a lot of attacks from copyright holders and are unavailable in some jurisdictions.

I don't know if the original link was to the Internet Archive.

[dang]

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40418482.)

[skilled]

It's really not. WSJ (and others) abuse paywalls by using Google-specific schema to have their paywalled articles show up in Search and Google News. That's my opinion of it. I do share your concern, but I think it ultimately ends up being beneficial for everyone. In the case of HN, the site can propel stories into the stratosphere, and that puts a lot of eyes on the paywalled site.

As for blind-eye, the other option would be to disallow paywalled stories entirely.

From the official Hacker News FAQ,

> It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.

> In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls.

[paulcole]

> is using archive.org as a way to get around paywalls like WSJ's an abuse

HN either shouldn't allow any sort of paywall bypass (other than gifted sharable links) or should ban submissions from sites that have a paywall, IMO.

I don't think YC could say with a straight face that they'd be OK w/ one of their portfolio company's content being taken from behind a paywall and shared elsewhere to a very large audience. Actually I do think they could (and would) say that, but I wouldn't believe them.

[curiousllama]

Definitely a tragedy of the commons situation.

I've used a number of tricks to circumvent paywalls over the years, and they all get shut down after a year or two.