Bypass Paywalls Clean browser extension review
Bypass Paywalls Clean is an open source browser extension for Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and other Chromium-based web browsers that loads paywalled articles once installed.
More and more sites implement paywalls as part of subscription services. Some sites allow guests to view a small number of articles before the paywall is erected, others may ask guests to subscribe right away. The main reason for doing so is to get users to sign-up and pay for the access privilege.
While sites and organizations may do as they please, more and more users are irritated by paywalled sites. Search for a topic on a search engine or stumble upon a link on a social site, and you may be directed to an article that you can't read unless you subscribe first. This user experience is frustrating.
Bypass Paywalls Clean is a browser extension that bypasses paywalls on more than one hundred sites. One of the main ideas behind the browser extension is to give everyone access to news. The developer has this to say about the extension's purpose:
Not everyone is able to afford multiple subscriptions on many different news sites, especially when they just want to read a single article (from Twitter) without being enrolled in a monthly/yearly membership.
The extension works right after installation. You should be able to read articles on the supported sites without configuring anything beforehand.
The extension's settings list all supported sites. There you may enable or disable individual ones, and check the preferences. Note that the extension has a daily user counter enabled by default, which you may disable here as well.
Bypass Paywalls Clean supports custom news sites, which you may add to the extension; this requires technical understanding of how bypasses work, on the other hand. Just select custom sites to get started and fill out the relevant values to add a bypass for a custom site.
Options include blocking JavaScript, using regular expressions for blocking, changing the user agent or referrer, and other parameters.
New sites that get added by the extension developer are enabled automatically once the extension picks them up; this can be disabled in the preferences. There, you also find an option to check for updated rules on startup, which is disabled by default.
Closing Words
Bypass Paywalls Clean worked well during tests. We did not experience any issues using it, but some interruptions may occur when sites make changes and rules are not updated right away. As long as rules do get updated, bypasses should continue to work though.
Now You: how do you handle sites with paywalls?
Martin!
Thanks for this article – very helpful; especially the ublock info.
I have been using Bypass Paywall Version 3.0.3.0 Last Updated 7 February 2023 for a year or two now but just in the last few months when I open a story from my local news paper that has photos or videos in the story I can’t open them to view them. I use to be able to do this but after the last two or three updates I no longer can.
I have been in touch with the Author magnolia1234 on two occasions about it but nothing happens and actually been accused of being a troll by him.
I am very appreciative of the add on as I can keep up with local and national news without spending an arm and leg to do so but still fine it annoying I can’t view photos ect.
> Not everyone is able to afford multiple subscriptions on many different
> news sites, especially when they just want to read a single article
> (from Twitter) without being enrolled in a monthly/yearly membership.
Can only write about Germany, but the sentence above is a call to crime. I would delete the sentence or if I were really adventurous I could wait and see what happens. The german keyword is “Abmahnung”.
The software bypasses over 15 German websites. Some paywalls are based on idiotic childish javascript. Others not. The latter could be judical.
I ve tested the addon very quick. On http://www.spiegel.de it doesn’t work, but it should. On http://www.zeit.de it works. But it might conflict with some Firefox addons and uBlock filterlists.
Does the addon work with Firefoxs skip redirect, clear urls, i don’t care about cookies and the uBlock filter lists of the same name?
I for myself prefer the user-agent method to bypass paywalls. That works quite well on german websites with paywall. Otherwise has validity: I do not read any websites with paywall. You have to understand that German publishers are all stingy. Their paywalls are therefore usually constructed very cheap to childish. Two paywalls can be killed with the FF addon “Behind the overlay” :). That says it all!
Supplement:
Regarding the “Behind The Overlay” browser extension,
README.md
https://github.com/NicolaeNMV/BehindTheOverlay#readme
This extension was featured on ghacks.net among others.
https://www.ghacks.net/2017/05/25/close-annoying-website-overlays-in-chrome-and-firefox/
Chrome error as the extension uses Manifest v2.
“homepage_url”: “https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean”,
“icons”: {
“128”: “bypass.png”
},
“manifest_version”: 2,
“key”: “MIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEAvLxf4oOeSoz8qKVzKGQWW5zW44hWCoOoQRGXTrObUpyoGfGzhFO8aZHQmBcLrAZMA4O6EA7GaXnHkOPCLKM11seZ4J2azb1gSswApfAlaoeOLnhDnp/Jpzz7Bt6o4HL+nhKRJUOZ9z+GXAyOkOps5O38TwJN5R6z8tLkleRgfYscp19YU/vq1x9PrbXIHJTRB7qtb/iJmiKATKisXGmFY3Nbs5m379TGqcJFBM9bI+8bSJtS4e7t0LHOwSLDq3IVRaWVsFd9P19WEDNTxuzr9+rczOrw1vgmiisNOcElse8cyVIoq4bjepvfHM/9nzDgKwQsNG5OTzujwHu2UUN4cwIDAQAB”,
“name”: “Bypass Paywalls Clean”,
“Now You: how do you handle sites with paywalls?”
Toggle Javascipt off for that site.
Use Element hiding to deal with any pages the above fails at.
This has worked for almost two decades.
This increasingly works less and less as sites have increasingly moved to more and more dynamically loaded content, many doing so intentionally to prevent paywall bypassing.
I didn’t read all the comments but surely, the use of functional options in U-block Origin can take care of this by removing overlays and so on.
Just thought I’d mention it because the fewer add-ons you have, the less complexity you have to deal with, when you run into a page problem.
PN [London UK]
If it’s just an overlay, you can remove it with this addon: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/behind_the_overlay/
@Peter Newton: I don’t think uBO can handle this, it only handles ads and trackers, AFAIK.
12ft.io
That does the trick for me. Have to change URL but I don’t have to use it heavily, so worth it.
YOU WOULDN’T DOWNLOAD A CAR !!!!!!!
Now that cars are capable of BSOD, why yes, I would download one ;)
Maybe in the future with some kind of teleporting device : “Download your car now, try it free for seven days”.
As usual some of us would focus on our dream, some others would dream of downloading them all. That’s always been the difference between the per-situation and the industrial approach of making ours what belongs to (an)other(s).
I know some that download everything they can, by all means legal or not and even if they will never use it, and others who just get their kick by the very practice of stealing conceived as their power over a society hey deny. Life, misery.
You can do it in Metaverse. Just ask Zuck.
@Yash, I prefer goods within at most our universe, beyond is far too much dreamlike without dreams’ advantages : in the Metaverse everything is virtual… except money. You dream as when asleep and pay as awake. I’ll never participate to such an insane concept. Absurd.
My last comment was written in the theme of sarcasm.It seems I messed everything. Apologies if that comment was offensive.
@Yash, I guess i would have detected the sarcasm had I only made the relationship between “Zuck” … Zucker.. sugar and mountain. I missed it. I know nothing of the company except that I avoid it.
EDIT, sorry (I was comparing “this to this” rather than “this to that” …
“I know some that download everything they can, by all means legal or not and even if they will never use it, and others who just get their kick by the very practice of stealing conceived as their power over a society hey deny.”
“I know some that download everything they can, by all means legal or not and even if they will never use it, who just get their kick by the very practice of stealing conceived as their power over a society they deny, and others who download, legally or even not, but for one specific thing, you know? Like some guys prefer to have ’em all gals and others prefer to fall in love. Same thing.”. Usufruct verses possession.
Hi there, I can find the extension on the Gitlab page provided in the comments, but not in the Brave/Chrome store. Does anyone know why?
Martin, I hate to be that guy, but are you sure that this article is legally OK? Adblocking has been considered legal in various court decisions in Germany mostly related to complaints against the eyeo GmbH (AdBlock Plus) – no one can be forced to consume ads. But if a website takes explicit measures to ensure that you pay for its content, and you circumvent these measures, how is that legal? It’s a dark grey area at the very least IMHO.
Not sure of the legality of describing the use of such an extension (might still be OK to do so), but actually operating it as a user? Puhh… Not so sure about that one.
It’s not like I personally care, the vast majority of the websites listed there are not something that I would read quality-wise, I can find fact-free opinion pieces and propaganda elsewhere as well.
@Iron Heart
> “how is that legal?”
It’s legal because this extension simply discards the overlay notice which is attached to a publicly-accessible web page — it does NOT permit you to access a protected file server which requires a password (a.k.a. “hard paywall”). It would be impossible to enforce a law that prevents you from modifying web pages on your own computer, and a court which has no capacity to enforce a law has no jurisdiction, so a law of the sort which you are describing would be utterly pointless. This is just common sense — and of course I have considered the possibility that you are only pretending to be an ignoramus here.
Some newspapers which have implemented paywalls have abandoned them just a few months after launch, when they found that growth of the reader base stopped. And the Columbia Journalism Review declared that hard paywalls make sense only for “the most essential news providers“, where readers cannot find the same information elsewhere. The majority of the public does not use “paywall bypass” tools, and there is no statistical evidence which indicates that paywalls of ANY sort represent a viable solution for publishers in general.
Now it’s patently obvious that only a person with a vested interest in a site with a soft paywall would go around trying to scare the users of this extension with imaginary legal threats, so don’t even try to pretend that you are one of us: the only people who would resort to such desperate and futile measures are those who depend on a broken business model (and fresh out of ideas because they are clueless idiots). And you’re probably not a journalist, because a professional journalist would not think that undefined words like “Puhh” would make their argument sound more convincing. So I would peg you as an incompetent manager or a shareholder, by the process of deductive reasoning.
Despite your foolish attempts to insult the reader’s intelligence here, I harbour no animosity and would recommend that you consider other options besides these absurd terror tactics. Newspapers thrived for centuries on advertising, and the only reason internet ad blockers work is that the ads are fetched from an ad agency’s server instead of the same one that hosts the other images. Readers often complain that the ads are not relevant, or they blow the data cap on mobile devices. So you need to limit the number of ads served over metered connections, and A.I. will soon be used to serve more relevant ads which appeal to the readers of specific articles. Many of those who block ads could be convinced to change if they had control over the amount, and the ads were frequently relevant to their needs.
Another thing you could do is use the Brave ad network and actively promote the Brave browser. When your readers realise that they can earn credits for viewing privacy-protecting ads, and they realise that they can support their favorite sites without globally allowing ads & pop-ups, they might come around — if your content is worthwhile and you implement this correctly. But these ridiculous, empty threats just remind us of how CNN tried to convince us that it is illegal for us to read the leaked DNC e-mails which got Seth Rich killed. You might be accustomed to playing the public and getting away with it, but trust in the establishment media syndicates is at an all-time low, and ‘the times they are a-changin’: if you are a purveyor of statist political propaganda, you might as well just give up.
https://thefreethoughtproject.com/the-state/cnn-wikileaks-illegal
https://brave.com/brave-ads/
_______
> “how is that legal? It’s a dark grey area at the very least IMHO.”
> “Describing how it works may perhaps be legal, actually using it is definitely not.”
You went from ASKING if it is legal to DECLARING that it is NOT within a matter of hours – without any debate or research at all …and you expect people to take you seriously??
> “I think you judge me unfairly here, which is a pity. Opinions are opinions, I guess.”
So the terror tactics failed and now you are playing the pity card, cute. You think you’ve been “unfairly judged” ?? –well turnabout is fair play, whiny man. If you lead with threats, unproven opinions & false accusations, you have no right to complain when others respond.
@Iron Heart: Martin is not doing anything illegal as he is not putting an illegitimate product on the market, nor does he even peddle any.
As a journalist, he just reviews a product that has been put on the market by others.
Would it be illegal to review how a car theft scam works? Of course not.
@Klaas Vaak
> Martin is not doing anything illegal as he is not putting an illegitimate product on the market
I never said that he was the extension developer.
> nor does he even peddle any.
Describing exactly how piracy works and linking to it at the same time is not peddling it? OK, let’s just agree to disagree here. If he does not want to peddle it, he should at least put some lines in the article describing the dubious legality of the extension and that he asks his readers to please comply with the law. I would be satisfied with that, and consequently would take back the “he promotes piracy” argument.
> Would it be illegal to review how a car theft scam works? Of course not.
No, but I also believe the barrier to car theft is a bit higher than just installing some extension, eh? I think this is not really comparable.
> Nothing illegal at all about this.
Putting out detailed descriptions on how to perform piracy is illegal in some jurisdictions, it’s legal in others. Using the product itself is definitely not legal though and nobody should be pointed to it without a disclaimer (better: not point to it at all).
> OTOH, you are promoting censorship.
The fact that I can’t decide what to publish here anyway aside, promoting censorship would be “Martin, DELETE THIS ARTICLE ASAP!”, which is not something I ever said. He is free to publish whatever he wants, although at least a disclaimer would have been more than just warranted here. He can publish what he wants, and I can have my opinion on that, can’t I? And in my opinion such articles may well damage the blog. There’s a reason why this extension is not present on the Chrome Web Store and is barely tolerated on AMO.
I think you judge me unfairly here, which is a pity. Opinions are opinions, I guess.
@Iron Heart + @Shiva
You allege piracy but fail to provide evidence. Your feelings are not evidence of copyright infringement and typing them out is merely publicly displayed nonsense; it is meaningless in law.
So instead of relying on pulled from the air hunches, either of you two can provide the legal statutes asserted as being violated. Please use citations and legitimate case law, not meaningless guesses.
We’re still waiting, tick tock.
@Iron Heart
> Putting out detailed descriptions on how to perform piracy is illegal in some jurisdictions, it’s legal in others.
Martin only operates in 1 legal jurisdiction: Germany. He therefore only needs to be concerned with the legality of his work there.
Re censorship: I am not disputing the fact that you can have your own opinion, you are entitled to it as much as anyone else. But if you publish your opinion here, I, like anyone else, is entitled to question/criticize it, (dis)approve of it, whatever.
I am not judging you, I am taking issue with your opinion, like you do when I compare Martin’s product description and a car theft description: you criticize my comparison. I have no problem with that.
You also take issue with my statement that Martin does not peddle the product. That’s fine, you can criticize my opinion.
So, why should I not take issue with your opinion? Isn’t that what honest and open discussion is about?
I for one believe knowledge should not be kept from those who can not pay for it.
@Tachy: if it concerns only facts, then that should be in the public domain. If concerns news analysis then that can be considered proprietary, just like a book is.
@Tachy, an article is knowledge (when it is : might well be fake news, or interpretation of knowledge) brought via someone’s work to make it understandable. I think we’re paying for that work, I think it may be too expensive or a bargain depending on the article. Reminds me ‘MAD Magazine’ and its “$xx, Cheap!”.
@Iron Heart
Content theft is a different thing. If you’re saying folks should not view content if they didn’t buy it, well give your head a shake. Go touch grass, feel it and read your comment again.
I don’t think we are in a gray area. We can argue about the quality of the news (a long list of embarrassments), I can agree about the frustration of users when there is no indication that the content is under paywall, but otherwise it is piracy in addition to the fact that these materials are copyrighted.
Unless someone can explain to me some sophistry about what is the difference between a DVD, a streaming subscription video on-demand service or a newspaper (after taking a look at some of the sites listed).
As long as the content is not speficic only for the website you can also drop by the newsstand if you want to read the given day’s news with no need for monthly subscriptions.
Considering then that nowadays you only need to read the privacy policies of the sites concerned (IP, browsing profiling, time spent reading the article, scroll of the reading, track whether the page has paywall active or not), if I were to use this extension I would not do so lightly.
@Shiva
> I don’t think we are in a gray area.
Yeah, I wanted to be polite. I don’t think actually using the extension is legal at all, describing in detail how you can use it may or may not be legal, depending on jurisdiction.
> As long as the content is not speficic only for the website you can also drop by the newsstand if you want to read the given day’s news with no need for monthly subscriptions.
The newspapers also run promos on a regular basis where you can legally read the paywalled articles for free, for a limited time. However, these promos appear so regularly that this extension might not be needed. I have sometimes seen 4 – 8 weeks for free offered.
As I said, personally I hardly care. Because journalists these days like to push their opinions on me, I have resigned myself to free news tickers only giving brief headlines with short, down to earth descriptions of events. While not perfect, at least I can avoid long-winded essays about the opinion of the journalist (most of the websites this extension tackles). So while I don’t care about the vast majority of these websites, it is not a good look for gHacks to write about piracy, this could damage the blog more than anything else.
@Iron Heart
Stop your nonsensical fear mongering. Back yourself up. Provide actual legal citations to your statement, “I don’t think actually using the extension is legal at all.” Go ahead, I dare you. Until you do, your statement is nonsense; you’ll find no such case law nor legal doctrines to back up your nonsensical fear mongering. People still do have rights you know.
PS: For the record I agree with you on one point. Most all media is corporate owned PR firms featuring propaganda to steer the herds in desired directions.
@Iron Heart
I don’t see why gHacks should not publish this news. It is a information technology site.
The extension is also on Mozilla’s Add-on’s Store, it is useful for users to know how it works or whether it is safe. And even if the extension was not on the store this still remains a news about what is on the web.
@Shiva, though I don’t use ‘ByPass Paywalls Clean’ myself, I do find workarounds so in the face of your comment it’s as if I did use the add-on. Interesting topic, though the word ‘piracy’ seems to me exaggerated : it’s about reading, not copying/pasting, plagiarism does not apply be the article copyrighted or not. We’re peeking, not poking.
Be noted that the developer of ‘ByPass Paywalls Clean’ does state on the extension’s AMO page:
“Not everyone is able to afford multiple subscriptions on many different news sites, especially when they just want to read a single article (from Twitter) without being enrolled in a monthly/yearly membership.
Notice: if you use this add-on regularly on the same website, please consider paying a subscription for it. Don’t forget that free press can’t be sustainable without funding.”
It may be considered as exaggerated to require a subscription for a full length article’s availability for those who just land on a page and do not plan to visit the site regularly; not sure this is an incentive for a user’s return by the way. Otherwise I’d agree that the subscription concept becomes more consistent for frequent visitors. Given I bypass paywalls though on very few sites (in that I don’t visit more than once most of those those concerned), but given when I do it is therefor regularly, I’ll have to accept the hiatus between what I formally consider as a slight misbehavior (little, tiny, microscopic sin?!) and what I actually do : yes, I do bypass paywalls on very few sites I visit regularly. I cannot say I deny your comment on the ground it’d be opposite to my (seldom) practice :=). This said, if I buy a newspaper will the newspaper require a fee to anyone I’d lend the newspaper to? The fact with the digital environment is that classic schemes related to physical existence don’t apply, and that, from the site’s admin perspective, it’s all subscribe or none reads (fully).
To be continued …
@Tom Hawack
I am not criticizing this extension, which moreover is only a tool, certainly if you read a copyrighted article that requires a subscription (which perhaps you can moreover find in print version at the newsstand) this is a form of piracy. I don’t think there is much difference between ‘reading’ and ‘watching’.
It is also not the case of scientific publishing, which are loan sharks in terms of the prices of even individual article.
About copying and pasting this is part of the long list of embarrassments that the various newspapers exchange with each other, sometimes they are not even able to translate well what they plagiarize.
I can appreciate the message of the developer and the good faith in intentions, I have my doubts that there is a self-restraint in using it counting on a renewed joy of users to subscribe to the various subscriptions apart from the eventual main subscription.
Well, one-time certainly can be useful but it doesn’t change the action itself without sophistry. I also doubt that that anyone is a ‘saint’ when it comes to the web, but at least let’s use the terms for what they are. I guess we are getting used to have our cake and eat it too with digital content.
We are then in a context where even it is not so necessary to break the rules considering the presence of excellent sites that delve into the news without paywals, keep in mind even in this case if not through advertising the support is by donation, if you don’t eat you don’t investigate and write.
At this point, since for me information is a primary commodity I would prefer to vote for someone who includes financial support for a primary subscription in the agenda.
@Shiva
Nonsense, there is no legal doctrine of, “Copyrighted articles requiring a subscription”. Copyright law grants exclusive rights and case law determines the methods those few rights can be breached. One of those exclusive rights, is the concept of “display”. That word is public display such as art in a gallery or sports in a pub; but does not nullify the right to private display, so you don’t go there. Read up on case law to discover copyright’s limitations. Inform yourself of its definition which for the record in the U.S., it is defined “As a general matter, copyright infringement occurs when a copyrighted work is reproduced, distributed, performed, publicly displayed, or made into a derivative work without the permission of the copyright owner.”. This is why in case law, attempts to remove this sort of software fails; even when attempts are made under the horrid DMCA. Follow EFF for a while and you’ll find, citizens still cling to an iota of rights; even though most of its laws are written by corporate lawyers on behalf of corporations and billionaires and no longer written by public servants.
https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-definitions.html
@Shiva,
> I have my doubts that there is a self-restraint in using it counting on a renewed joy of users to subscribe to the various subscriptions apart from the eventual main subscription.
> At this point, since for me information is a primary commodity I would prefer to vote for someone who includes financial support for a primary subscription in the agenda.
Indeed self-restraint is ideal but indeed as well when support is proposed as an option few will follow, I’m afraid.
I quite agree with your views. The point is all work deserves s salary but meanwhile the salary may be over-estimated.
I think asking i.e. 5USD/month for a site subscription is way too expensive. I’d be seduced by 1$/month subscriptions.
I think asking to bear an indecent amount of advertisement in place of a paid subscription is way too high.
Also, when I mentioned regularity I should rather have mentioned frequency, that of sites we visit. I’d really start to feel shamed on a site I visit several times a day, that the site require a paid subscription, and that I find a work-around to bypass limited articles… like i.e.here on Ghacks. But what about such a site where I bypass not a paid subscription but its advertisements : why wouldn’t I feel ashamed as well? I guess the main difference is that, personally, I tend to believe that ads bring far more funds than those aiming balance would require, that there is for most sites an aim for profit rather than for dealing with the costs that lead me to a natural disagreement of the price.
Idealistically we should be in a situation of win-win, fair prices/ads, no/limited profit when it comes to Web pages.
There is also a major point to consider which is whether a person’s or a company’s Website revenues are the only ones in their business plans. I’ve always believed that making a living only from one’s Website is not the best idea : revenue sources must be plural. Most news media which moved from paper to digital have their websites among those imposing the most ads (& trackers!) for that reason : their support is their revenue. On the other hand discovering a Website of a luxury company filled with ads ‘n’ trackers is for sure aiming increased profit rather than the decent revenue made of decent profit which is the scheme of a digital newspaper, for instance.
It’s as always all in honesty. Mine included.
@Tom Hawack
The fact is that the discourse is long and full of contextualization including piracy, between act and (eventual) legitimacy. It is not for me to draw the line or judge.
As far as I know newspapers are not doing well even less so the related external collaborators with precarious job at minimum wage based on typing (and in fact the quality and independence suffers). 1$/month subscriptions is an argument that is based on multiple subscriptions, I don’t even buy a daily newspaper from the newsstand at this price although we are talking about the reduced costs from putting content online.
>But what about such a site where I bypass not a paid subscription but its advertisements : why wouldn’t I feel ashamed as well?
This is a good point although the fact that others put content without paywall is not justification for infringing on those who put copyright. In all fairness it is still harm done to the site and those who work on it. With personal aggravation if the site is really useful to you. On the other hand if uBlock exists there is a reason as well and if you give an inch, they’ll take a yard, not all sites of course. Let alone when I pay for a license or subscription and still remain fodder to be squeezed because my data or behavior is worth additional revenue.
Having said that we are both in the same boat because we both use OS level blocking filters which makes it more complicated to make exceptions and extensively blocks Ads.
It remains a question of choices between subscriptions. Perhaps to limit individual costs it might be a solution to include them with choice within the offerings to providers who then redistribute the revenue in a way that reaches more users, however, this does not apply to non-subscription sites. Okay, you can include those as well and it would remain an ‘ethical’ choice of users.
@Tom Hawack
> Interesting topic, though the word ‘piracy’ seems to me exaggerated
Do you like “theft” better? Taking a good without paying for it, despite payment being asked of you, is theft.
> Not everyone is able to afford multiple subscriptions
Then you can’t do or have what you can’t afford. I can’t afford some stuff either, does not mean I am allowed to steal it all of a sudden. Dumb excuse.
By the way, newspapers do put out one promo after another, fully legal, and free of charge. You are quite dumb if you perform piracy on something that you can still legally have for free via other avenues.
Promoting piracy by describing how to perform it damages this blog, I am stunned that Martin does it in the first place. Various commenters stating that they engage in content theft does not make it better, it worsens the already bad impression.
@Iron Heart
It is not theft. Theft is a specific legal term that requires several specific elements to be met before it can be considered theft. Like many hyperventilating types, you conveniently omitted important components of the definition of theft.
In a nutshell in must jurisdictions, theft is,
* The act of taking another’s property without permission. With the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.
Though a few have tried, “the intent to deprive” is the legal reason few are prosecuted for this class of software; because the “owners” are never deprived of their property. You should read case law before hyperventilating nonsense on blogs. It is why RIAA never criminally prosecutes downloaders, because it is not a legal crime, it is a civil offense because “the intent to deprive” is not met. Uploading can be a crime because the burden of intent to deprive can be met and possible proven.
@Iron Heart: I disagree, Martin is not promoting piracy, that is a nonsensical statement.
Martin describes the product and the reasons why people might want to use it, which is based on real life examples.
Nothing illegal at all about this. OTOH, you are promoting censorship.
I am sorry that you are this time that guy. It is legal.
https://addons.mozilla.org/fi/firefox/search/?q=Bypass%20Paywalls%20Clean
You talkin’ to me, @Legal, you talkin’ to me? :)
Of course ‘Bypass Paywalls Clea’ is legal, who ever said, wrote, even thought it wasn’t?!
Iron Heart said on September 5, 2022 at 11:53 am
“I hate to be that guy, but are you sure that this article is legally OK?”
:Legal said on September 5, 2022 at 1:57 pm
I am sorry that you are this time that guy. It is legal.
::Tom Hawack said on September 5, 2022 at 8:38 pm
You talkin’ to me, @Legal, you talkin’ to me? :)
Of course ‘Bypass Paywalls Clea’ is legal, who ever said, wrote, even thought it wasn’t?!
:::Iron Heart was unsure and was that guy that he hates.
@Legal
> It is legal.
Source? Is it “Trust me, bro”? Linking to the extension is not a source.
Describing how it works may perhaps be legal, actually using it is definitely not.
Two bothers encountered on several sites,
1- Paywalls;
2- GDPR cookie consent for devices within the EU.
– Some/many paywalls may indeed be bypassed with ‘Bypass Paywalls Clean’
– GDPR consent may be bypassed with ‘I don’t care about cookies’, its uBO filters and/or its add-on. NOTE : I had emailed the developer who advised me then to use both (add-on + uBO filters).
I had tried both add-ons, no longer use neither add-on. Why?
1- ‘Bypass Paywalls Clean’ for Firefox [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywalls-clean/] :
– handles far more Paywalls that I personally encounter : good but less for my case;
– I happen to encounter paywalls which are not handled : nothing is bullet-proof.
2- ‘I don’t care about cookies’ :
– Its uBO filters handles enough GDPR consents in my case.
3- Modifying the browser’s User-Agent, when performed with a good switcher, handles many paywalls as well as many GDPR cookies consents. Personally I use [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/uaswitcher/] and set (site specifically) the UA to either Google Bot or Microsoft Bot : the results are amazing though that will forbid any login of course.
4- uBlock Origin, again, correctly set and fitted (filter lists) will directly or indirectly handle many bothers, some related to paywalls as well as to GDPR consent.
5- Amazing results as well with site-specific cookie blocking.
I may give nevertheless ‘Bypass Paywalls Clean’ another try though in my experience it’ll seldom intervene to fix paywalls for the above-mentioned reasons.
Reviewing (apart from a journalist’s approach) is always double : general and personal (a user’s need and experience within his own environment and way of life… I mean way of surfing, of course.)
In many cases, using “Reader Mode” (either the native one in your browser, or an extension) will defeat the paywall notice, and that is often less trouble than switching user-agent. And “Consent-o-Matic” does a reasonably good job of handling GDPR consent dialogs.
https://consentomatic.au.dk/
ublock filters – annoyances don’t really block many cookie warnings because it’s supposed to be an extension to already existing filters just like ublock filters in general. It also doesn’t seem to remove annoyances in general.
Changing user agent breaks a lot of sites and customizing it per-site is a hassle and i think defeats the purpose. But then again, I don’t really stick to one news site that has a paywall. I just stumble into one that might have a paywall.
So maybe I’m doing something wrong, but for Opera neither Bypass Paywalls Clean or Bypass Paywalls Chrome Clean is listed…
Your mistake was failing to read the instructions. While I concede that the article does not link them directly, if you dont find it in the Opera extension repository, then reading the documentation on the developer’s site to find the installation method is the next logical step.
https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean#installation
I search the title in Google. There is almost always someone else who has scanned the blocked article and posted it on the 1st page of hits.
so far, I normally use Private Browsing for reading articles behind a Paywall(no traces left so next time the Paywall does not see it earlier articles shown); cleaning cookies each time you close a browser may also help, but gives also other negative effects.
furthermore, I use several different browsers, if one paywall is full, switch to other browser till that is filled up etc.
“Now You: how do you handle sites with paywalls?”
I don’t visit them. Period. If necessary I search the web for the article’s title and usually find better and free options to read most if not all of the original article.
Bit weird for batman.
:)
At least provide the correct urls …
Chrome: https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean
Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/bypass-paywalls-clean
Is this just a plagiarized version of “https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome” ?
Don’t spread this bullshit.
https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean/-/issues/1
I do not understand your response. Please indicate which part is “bullshit” and explain why.
My thoughts exactly.
@Martin: are you sure you reviewed the correct extension? I’ve been using ‘Bypass Paywalls’ by Adam (link above me) for ages, and have never heard of this ‘Clean’ version until now…
He’s sure. The “original” one is close to abandoned and has been for a long time. Check out its release history. This is the type of product that needs regular care and feeding, and it’s been years since the original has seen that. This one is updated weekly and it’s dramatically better.
Abandoned would be exaggeration. The last commit was made on 7 June of this year, and there were regular changes to the code once a month. If you check the issues page you will see there is again regular engagement from the developer. Given that this project relies on the developer’s free time, this level engagement is expected and won’t necessarily mean the project is abandoned. I don’t know how this “clean” version differs from the original version, but it’s clear from the number of contributions from the wider community, the original version is much more accepted and adopted and therefore it is less likely to cause any issues.
The original version might as well be “abandoned” if it does not work on the sites that you want it to. The “clean” version is updated more frequently (and half of the changes are compatibility updates for existing sites):
https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/releases
https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean/-/blob/master/changelog.txt
The primary reason to fork this was the lack of routine maintenance:
https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean/-/issues/1
_________
> “the original version is much more accepted and adopted and therefore it is less likely to cause any issues” ??
Your logic is faulty because:
(1) you provide no proof that the original version is more widely deployed
(2) a large user base does not guarantee fewer issues [ever heard of Microsoft Windows??], and there have been several instances where an extension included tracking or spying code AFTER it became very popular.
I am grateful to both developers – the one who created it, and the one who maintains it the best. When the version that works the best is also the one without Google Analytics, the optimal choice is obvious.
Clean was forked after the developer included analytics tracking code in the original.
BPC user/fan here. It’s simply excellent, best in class by a mile. The author updates so fast that if I encounter a working paywall, it’s probably because of an error I’m making rather than a limitation in BPC.
Note that some newspapers are listed in the add-on under the name of the parent company instead of the name of the site itself. For example, some Canadian sites aren’t on the list; instead you have to check “PostMedia”, their owner. If you check everything by default (and there’s no reason not to) you don’t have this issue.
The add-on asks for new site-specific permissions each update. While some may see this as a hassle, I vastly prefer this to add-ons that ask for blanket permissions up front (which most all other add-ons do).
Umm.. I use Bypass Paywalls Clean 2.5.6.3
:-)
You win a cookie
Ooooh! Is it chocolate chip?
so?