2.06.2013

A simple "Hack" Burlington Free Press Edition

Being from VT it's only natural to check the Burlington Free Press (BFP), Seven Days, and any other source of information that helps me keep in touch with the homeland. The information is valuable but isn't essential and certainly not worth paying to consume. Enter the Paywall. The BFP introduced one last year which limits a visitor to read 8 free articles before throwing up this message:


Pay a subscription to read 3-4 articles per week? That sounds an awful lot like the cable business model with a whole lot of data intrusion and over targeted ads.  It's clearly not worth paying to read local sports scores, OP-eds, and the occasional renewable energy article especially at nearly the same price as the NYT. That's where old reliable, Google, comes in for breaking past the Paywall. It takes an extra step to read each article but it's as simple as copying the title, popping it into le google, and hitting enter. The pay wall gets tricked into thinking this was your last free article:


Thanks Google! This trick also works on the New York Times website:


There are plenty of other types of Paywalls to get around with Google, including my least favorite, Linkedin. More on that in my next "hack" post ;)