Thursday, March 15, 2012

And After All...You're My Paywall...

Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times initiated a paywall to their website, requiring users to pay a fee starting at 99 cents a month to read any content beyond 15 articles and the main page.

Well you could assume that didn't go over well. The entire city scoffed, and while a few thought the 99-cent fee was reasonable, The Militant doesn't think the Times deserves even a penny as long as it's controlled by its Chicago slavemasters.

A newspaper dwindling in content and soul (Okay so they signed on The J-Gold, but what else have they got now?), it was especially, and most embarrassingly shameful that even The New York Times, of all things, had much better coverage of the LACMA Rock's arrival than our hometown rag did (and it pains The Militant so much to even admit that).

Ugh...let The Militant rest for a bit. That was too heart-wrenching.

[Breathes Deeply, drinks a glass of water]

Okay. Anyways, early Wednesday evening, after innocently clicking on a Twitter link, The Militant hit the much-feared Paywall and got the "Become a member to keep on reading" pop-up. Hmmm. He didn't even think he went through 15 articles thus far...So he clicked on the "No Thanks" at the bottom.

Now, The Militant surfs with two web browsers: One for himself, and the other for his mild-mannered alter-ego, named [Ahahahaaa, you thought he'd go there, did you?].

But The Militant pulled up the other web browser, went to latimes.com and even searched for the article that was blocked from him. He was able to read it in its entirety. He was even able to read another one!

He also tried deleting the "latimes.com" and "lat.ms" cookies from his main web browser and went back to the Times' website. But he got another Paywall warning (Update: Deleting ALL cookies, rather than selectively deleting latimes.com cookies, will work! Go for it!)

So there you go...if you want to circumvent Le Paywall, just clean out your cookies regularly and have your Firefox, your Chrome, your Internet Explorer, your Opera and your Safari browsers installed and handy. Among all those, you can read up to 75 articles for free! And if you got a mobile or tablet device, let the good times roll!

Of course, you l33t h4xx0r types can use an IP faker under one browser, but The Militant didn't tell you that.

So enjoy your freeeee latimes.com content, paywall jumpers!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can also double the number of free links in each browser by opening articles in "incognito" (Chrome) or "InPrivate" (IE) modes.

EL CHAVO! said...

Or do like me and just go read another site.

babamoto said...

Your content is relevant, original and timely, Militant Angeleno!

Eric W said...

Sadly, your Militantness is absolutely on target about the New York Times having a better article. I too feel bad about the miserable newspaper we have to read here. I guess I'll read the NYTimes more often looking for the interesting LA local stories.

And, maybe not so right to this IT pro about IP Faker's site. It seems to sorta anonymous but not completely. My IP Address leaked through testing at the esteemable GRC.com. Try Tor for a more complete solution to cookies.

Onward Militantly!

Anonymous said...

Permanent solution for adBlock users:

Under AdBlock Options, click the Customize tab, then add the following filter in the "Manually edit your filters" box:

http://www.tribdss.com$domain=tribdss.com

Anonymous said...

Or just clear out only the cookie by "tribdss.com"...