Are tricks like bypassing paywalls illegal?

[noname223]

I recently read a newspaper article. It was about how to trick streaming services in order to save money. Many tricks were using foreign offers with VPN. The idea is to buy it in another country (virtually) to save money. I could imagine the streaming services are not that happy when mainstream media reports about such loopholes. The ironic thing is I have learned some tricks to bypass newspaper subscriptions. There are websites and browser extensions for that.

I am not sure whether it is illegal to bypass a paywall in such a manner. It is for sure against the terms and conditions of such companies.

Would you have a guilty conscience for bypassing such paywalls? I am ambivalent on it. The question whether it is illegal bothers me way more. When I see how these newspapers report about welfare and lazy unemployed people I don't have much empathy for them. Though the legal consequences scare me.

I think in my country it is legal to circumvent geoblocking. Though whether the rest of these tricks are legal I am not sure about that.

 

[jodes2]

I wouldn't have a guilty conscience at all since I don't look at many articles and a subscription would be excessive for all the newspapers! Fuck em!

 

[MellowAvenue]

It isn't illegal but it may violate certain companies' terms and conditions. It'll probably never be illegal though because it'd be pretty difficult to actually govern given the nature of VPNs and how it could be someone on the other side of the globe committing the hypothetical crime.

 

[Someone123]

It sounds illegal to me, but do they enforce this?

 

[noname223]

The NYT blocked my IP from accessing their website. It does not even work anymore with a VPN. I am not scared of prosecution. I am rather concerned other (better) outlets copy their mechanisms. I save so much money. But I think it still works with a VPN and a different browser.

 

[Apathy79]

A lot of these paywall removers have become way less effective for me in the last 6-12 months. I barely even try to use them anymore. Just try to find non-paywall sites that copy the story.

 

[EternalShore]

paywalling scientific and historical papers is awful and absurd~ >_< It just stops people who aren't affiliated with a university from gaining a comparable level of knowledge for no reason other than the website profiting because the authors don't get money for having their stuff paywalled~ >:(
for news sites, I'll run into it a few times when they're reporting on historical anniversaries, but usually, those don't even have enough information on them for me to even care other than checking just in case~
for doing stuff to get around corporations tho, I stopped caring when everything became subscription-based, and I couldn't own anything anyways~ They'd never get the money anyways because I'd buy it secondhand (and usually, can only buy it secondhand) anyways~

The NYT blocked my IP from accessing their website. It does not even work anymore with a VPN. I am not scared of prosecution. I am rather concerned other (better) outlets copy their mechanisms. I save so much money. But I think it still works with a VPN and a different browser.

if you care to be able to still use the same browser, you can probably just delete cookies, or in the worst case scenario, figure out where they put the past browser use history files and delete all those~

 

[Unbearable Mr. Bear]

Illegal or not, it is unethical. And if it is unethical, and the laws don't work, why should I care? BYPASS THEM ALL! (Search for FMHY, you won't be dissapointed!)