Eh, that's not really correct. Most of us actually make money from creating IP for others to own, so it's not nearly as hypocritical as you imply.
IMHO, the brazenness is cultural momentum from the expectations formed during the heady 90s "information wants to be free" period and the resulting long period where paywalls were rare. Honestly, it probably would have been better for everyone if everything had been pay-walled from the beginning.
Actually, I think most of us provide services, and it is a big mix.
> many of us are pretty brazen about our efforts to circumvent payment for others' IP.
Let me start with a link on Elsevier https://openatcuny.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2015/05/20/elsevier-e...
Much of what is said about Elsevier, the worst offender, is true to a lesser extent in other paywalls.
I don't believe that paywalls are Moral, Ethical, or Fair. I also believe that paywalls can be discrimatory, and deceptive. This goes along with a general critique I have of IP. Paywalls regularly use others' content, without compensating them.
In many cases, content thieves likes Elsevier take content that is funded by our tax dollars, and hide it behind paywalls, or expensive subscriptions. I paid for that. This is stealing from me.
IP is really a fake term that conflates a number of things, some of which are just ideas or math. It also regularly cheats basic things like "Right of First Sale" through BS such as licensing/bundling/etc
Paywalls regularly permit search engines to index their content, but when you go to see the content that was openly indexed, they block you, and hit you up for funding. This is a bait & switch. Some paywalls vacillate between business models intentionally to get your personal data, sell it, while using ads, then go full paywall after the sale has already been made of info.
I think there is a social contract underpinning communications, that we were always free to redistribute them. But the "Communication thieves" Paywalls don't want that through the cottage industry that grew to exploit these gaps.
If we think of the negative impacts of all these paywalls to the 3rd world and increasing digitization, talk about a horrible digital divide emerging?
Signed,
Militant Anti-Paywall Revolutionary
Honestly, I think it's a mistake reason about all paywalls from the example of Elsevier's paywalls. There are a lot of unique aspects to the production of academic work that are not present in other areas.
Revenue is needed to fund the creation of other kinds of work, such as news reporting, and for stuff like that, paywalls are needed because other free-access revenue models frankly didn't work.
If they don't like it, it's trivial to put their content behind a requirement to log in with a validated account. In fact, it's even easier than what they do now!
Oh, but wait, that won't play with the SEO, user engagement, social media sharing, dark patterns to entice users to pay by offering them a few crumbs now and then... Again, not my problem. They do them, I'll do me.
Seems we don't really have a good understanding of what goes wrong with paywalled links.
For me, as an author, I find myself in a ridiculous situation when I want to share with friends works I've done for a site that uses paywalls but doesn't pay me (yes this happens in the real world of publishing). So I am ambivalent and often share a link along with instructions on how to bypass access controls.
But more generally I am irritated by links other people share, such as here on HN, that are paywalled. I'd rather not know about them than experience the frustration and time-waste of following them.
So there is a contradiction/tension at the heart of digital publishing, that creators, critics, researchers and commenters really want exposure/reach more than they want (or get) money.
That said, paywalls are not the only problem and are more understandable than sites that block Tor, use Cloudflare, Geo-block, or those brain-dead ISPs or university sysadmins who block sites based on broad keywords so that almost any kind of research is impossible without tunnelling out past their crappy firewalls.
It's one of the nice things of knowing how technology works, and as long as it's doable only by technical people it's probably not a big issue for IP / content creators (I'm considering adding an extension from source a technical task).
As long as you don't commoditize piracy too much, it's fine.
Still, I wouldn't call that piracy at all.
As a non subscriber they open their door to you, offer you a counter and tell you you can lurk anything until the counter say you have to leave or pay. But that counter only really work if you accept to put batteries inside and turn it on and nobody is really bothering to check.
Also they chose to use drug dealers methods knowing very well that network effects will make you knock at their door on a regular basis.
Choosing to ignore that counter would be unethical/rude the same way taking photo in a museum that prohibit them is. But none of this is piracy.
The consumption model now just isn't comparable, though. If I was regularly going to my city newspaper's website to figure out what was going on, I'd pay them. But that isn't what is happening. Instead, their links are getting spammed all over the web to link aggregation sites like Hacker News, mixed in with links to non-paywalled content, from a universe of thousand of providers, many of which provide all of the content for free. Subscribing to one newspaper is fine, but there is no conceivable world in which I'm going to purchase subscriptions to every paywalled site I ever encounter a link to, especially when I usually don't know before clicking that it is paywalled.
Nonetheless, being able to meaningfully participate in the conversations generated by the article on link aggregator sites like this that provide comment sections means I need to read the articles, doesn't it? If the only options for consistently being able to do that are either 1) purchase 300+ distinct subscriptions to sites where I have no idea if I'm ever going back again, or 2) bypass the paywalls, I'm going to bypass the paywalls.
You're looking at it purely from the perspective of a consumer, which misses pretty significant parts of the picture. Someone needed to get paid to produced a lot of that content, and in many cases they won't have the revenue to do that without a paywall.
Your justification isn't too different from one that goes "if I want to meaningfully participate in American society, I need a car. However I don't want to pay $30,000+ for one, so if I can pick locks and hotwire a car to get the transportation I want, I'll do that instead of paying."
And nothing is stopping businesses from implementing an actual paywall, such that you must log in to see the content. Under such a model nothing short of actual copyright violation, i.e. somebody with access to the content making it available elsewhere, would make it possible to see the content without paying.
If content producers truly care that we don't "bypass" their paywall, the solution is trivial. Log in to see. No login, no see.
I'd imagine they're being put in a difficult due to search, which why they're doing it the way they're doing it.
And honestly, your justification rings hollow. It's akin to saying it's OK to steal if the anti-theft technology isn't there are is too easy to defeat. If you take my car from me, it's still theft if I left the doors unlocked an the key in the ignition.
I think we're long past using "theft" as an analogy for access to content. If I take a car from you I am depriving you of your car, and I would be able to profit from it if I were to sell it on the black market—that's what makes it theft. Let's not forget that at no point am I talking about gaining unauthorised access to a computer system, nor about making use of the content to the detriment of the copyright holder (publishing it elsewhere etc.). All I am doing is making use of my personal property in whichever way I please, and that sometimes happens to be reading the content that has already been sent to me by a business in whichever way it pleased. I am depriving nobody by activating Web Developer Tools in Firefox after having clicked a link to a website and being able to see the data that has already been sent to my browser. In fact, the website won't even be aware that I "stole" from them rather than decided not to subscribe.
Honestly, what rings hollow to me is so much moralising around wanting people to feel guilty for being able to circumvent the unnecessarily weak paywalls implemented by businesses which, let's not forget, are designed in that way for the businesses' own benefit and often to the detriment of the user's interest. A better analogy would be if a music venue insisted on playing with no sound-proofing to hopefully attract customers from the street, but expected any nearby homes to keep their own windows closed so they must pay if they want to listen to the music.
You're only looking at this only from your own selfish perspective, which misses a lot of important stuff.
> I think we're long past using "theft" as an analogy for access to content. If I take a car from you I am depriving you of your car, and I would be able to profit from it if I were to sell it on the black market—that's what makes it theft.
No, that's just a tired bit of bullshit self-justification. When you bypass a paywall, you're depriving the operator of the revenue they were expecting to support their operations. It's like sneaking into a movie theater without paying--if too many people do that, the movie theater will shut down and there won't be any movies playing to sneak into. And even if it doesn't reach that critical mass, you're freeloading off of other paying customers.
> Honestly, what rings hollow to me is so much moralising around wanting people to feel guilty for being able to circumvent the unnecessarily weak paywalls
A lock being weak doesn't mean it's OK to bypass it. Most locks are basically just messages saying you're not allowed to access. I could probably pick the lock to your house or apartment (and I'm not any good at lock picking, those locks usually suck). It sounds like you think it'd be fine if I did that and watched your TV or read your books when you're not home--after all, I wouldn't be depriving you of anything, right?
I'll admit that I incognito my way around a paywall from time to time, but I at least have the decency to feel kinda salty about it.