

On Porous Paywalls - bond
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/08/on-porous-paywalls.html

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StavrosK
Isn't this just a version of segmentation? I'm not very clear on how the
paywall works (specifically, how it _doesn't_ work, i.e. how it can be
bypassed), can someone elucidate?

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gmatty
I could probably clarify a few things. I built the paywall used at WSJ. WSJ's
paywall is actually "porous" by design. The reasons for this have a lot to do
with how news is discovered. Aggregators like Digg.com or Reddit.com can send
a lot of traffic to an article but links don't get readily shared if they are
locked behind a paywall. Search engines can also send a lot of traffic, but
many, including google, won't index you unless there is something of value on
the indexed page. This is one reason why you see a lot of sites having first
click free, or first click from a search engine free, etc. Things that are
considered in bypassing the paywall include request headers like referrer and
cookie, query string parameters in the url, as well as ip addresses (what
country you are in, etc). At one point if you were making a request from an
airplane you would get access.

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StavrosK
Very interesting, thank you.

