
Ask HN: Can we add an “Outline” link for paywalls? - mdrzn
Since many online newspapers are putting up a paywall, or straight up blocking visitors from EU, I think it&#x27;s time to consider adding or changing the &quot;web&quot; link that we see here in the comment page. 
I know that it&#x27;s used to search on Google for the same article with the intent to bypass the paywall, but time after time it failed me.<p>I&#x27;d personally love to see an &quot;Outline&quot; link which automatically redirects to the uncluttered version of an article using outline.com, which provides a great service. Or otherwise, a Chrome extension that recreate that just for HN.<p>At the moment I&#x27;m using a javascript bookmark, but whenever I visit the WSJ, it has the &quot;GDPR-EU&quot; wall that breaks the URL, so I can&#x27;t use the bookmark to jump to the Outlined version.<p>Disclaimer: not affiliated with anyone, just an annoyed EU member.
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cornstalks
From [https://www.outline.com/dmca.html](https://www.outline.com/dmca.html):

> _If someone else might own the copyright to it, don 't submit it. Outline is
> for reading pages that:_

> _1\. you own the rights to,_

> _2\. is in the public domain,_

> _3\. constitutes fair use, or_

> _4\. you have consent of the copyright holder._

> _If we find you repeatedly submitting copyrighted content, we will block you
> from using our service._

As awesome as Outline is, I think HN automatically creating Outline links
would eventually become problematic...

~~~
mdrzn
I'd say it constitutes as fair use, as it's a modified version, and not just a
copy of the original page.

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0942v8653
How about changing your javascript bookmarklet to do 'if on
news.ycombinator.com, use the url of the first a.storylink'. That way it can
be done from the comments page.

------
greyfox
I like to use this feature but constantly forgot its name, it was only until i
had stumbled upon it in a furiously mal-termed google search that i once again
found it and drilled its hyperlink into my brain.

i think that commenters have been pretty good about identifying paywalls and
commenting with a link that outlines the doc to provide a succinct
representation of the article

also anyone who is not familiar with the way outline works is you just type
outline.com/<your-full-[http://-link-here>](http://-link-here>) and it
generates an outline of the doc.

this is more than just useful for paywall articles i use it all the time to
get rid of ads and other annoying stuff when i just want to "read" an article.

------
mtmail
Email the admins: hn@ycombinator.com

~~~
shawn
Training us to do that is exactly how they maintain their control over the
community. And it is about control. We’re not allowed to ask for or say
anything about HN on HN.

I used to feel how you feel, but after examining the reasons why it’s like
this, it’s probably better to get in the habit of asking for things on HN
itself. Not only was it like that in the old days, but pg even started an
explicit feature requests thread where people could vote on feature priority.

I don’t think something like voting is useful, to be clear. I’m saying that
talking publicly about HN is step one in maintaining our own sense of identity
as a community.

------
ajonnav
You should try the existing Outline chrome extension. After you install it,
whenever you go to a paywalled site, all you have to do is click the Outline
button in your menubar/taskbar and it takes you to the Outline link for that
article.

------
cornholio
Is outline.com entirely legal? Do we have a guarantee similar services will be
available if outline.com goes down? Otherwise, de-GDPRizing and depaywallizing
functionality is much needed in adblockers, or even a standalone extension.

Any kind of accept-before-read prompt should die a fiery death. They are
making life impossible for those of us who browse in anonymous/incongito mode
by default. If it's published via HTTP, it's mine to consume the way I choose
and simply reading it has no legal implications on my part.

~~~
ovao
> If it's published via HTTP, it's mine to consume the way I choose and simply
> reading it has no legal implications on my part.

I don't understand the connection between HTTP and entitlement. Can you
explain why you feel that one implies the other?

~~~
cornholio
It's the same type of entitlement that makes me free to listen to anything
spoken in a public space. We can debate what is the public space in this case,
is it a publicly discoverable or password protected URL etc. - case in which
is not really "published", i.e made public. If it's legal for me to download
it on my machine, then I should be able to read it and disregard any prompt
(or setup my agent to so), it's clearly a non-binding contract.

~~~
ovao
Outline's servers are not a public space. The idea that discoverability by
protocol implies ownership or a grant of license seems faulty.

With respect to Outline's terms, I'm not a lawyer, so I can't speak to whether
they're necessarily legally binding. My _guess_ , based on how they're
presented, would be 'no'.

~~~
cornholio
I'm not sure you fully understood the problem or that we are speaking about
the same thing. Outline.com is a paywall bypass service that republishes
original material found on sites like the New York Times. I expect this
service to be illegal, I said so myself in the first post. Outline's terms are
irrelevant here, they are the ones clearly breaking NYT's terms.

That being said, I went on a tangent and expressed a _political preference_
that any "Click to continue reading and sell your soul" prompt should be non-
binding and functionality to bypass them should be added to browsers via
extensions.

New York Times servers are not a public space but the Internet is widely
recognized as such. A published article trying to force a legal contract as a
result of simply downloading and viewing the text, on my private computer, via
a public space, should be no more binding than email disclaimers. Again, this
is a political position, not legal advice.

~~~
ovao
Sorry if I misunderstood. There's certainly a lot of room for discussion and
debate about what terms are binding/enforceable and what aren't. Terms of
service and automatic user consent are pretty legally wishy-washy concepts in
general.

I understand the argument you're making, but I think it's not all that
dissimilar to the argument a person might make about software piracy: that
anything discoverable on the Internet becomes, essentially, fair game because
it inevitably touches your private device. From a technical perspective, the
argument's correct. From a moral/political perspective, I don't think there's
a meaningful distinction between the two.

~~~
cornholio
The software analogy is an interesting one. It is generally accepted that
software, when ran on a computer, embodies a device or service that is
fundamentally different from the same data simply displayed in an editor as
computer code. Click-through EULAs are widely recognized and enforced by
courts, quite the opposite of email disclaimers.

So in a sense, you do have the right to download any computer code you find on
the internet, if legally published by it's author. You can print it out and
study it's behavior and the author has no way to restrict that since they
themselves published the information. But you typically cannot run it or
modify it outside the license terms.

The distinction hinges on the interpretation we give to the data, and I guess
that opens a fatal flaw in my argument: while a HTML version of the article
constitutes a document that can be downloaded and read regardless of any
disclaimers attached, a binary blob that must be run to deobfuscate the text
is in effect a program. And since the hallmark of computers is their ability
for general programming, it's quite easy for publishers to force you to run a
program and accept it's licensing terms before providing the information you
seek.

~~~
ovao
The technical and legal sides to this discussion are interesting, but I think
they're really secondary to the moral side.

I think we can both pretty easily agree that paywalls suck. They're a short-
term solution to a problem whose long-term solution isn't clear, and they're
probably only marginally useful at that. I also think we can agree that the
web is a interesting mix of a kind of quasi-public space and privately-owned
space, and that means that discussions about what's 'fair' to access and what
isn't are a bit nuanced.

Ultimately, though, regardless of the nature of the content — whether it's
text, or images, or code — if a publisher pays to produce content and pays to
host that content, does that publisher not have some right to control access
to that content? The protocols we use to access it are open, and we pay to
access at least some of the interconnects responsible for ultimately
delivering it to our browsers, but that alone doesn't confer any access
rights. HN, for example, could ban any IP address with which your account's
been associated, at the server/proxy level, at any time, and without
subverting that you'd have no real recourse.

Generally I feel that the existence of piracy suggests that there are merely
under-served customers, and I think that applies here also. Publishers should
be coming up with better ways to let users pay for content and try to add real
value to that. _However_ , being denied access to the Times and so on does not
make your life impossible, or even particularly difficult.

