Free Chrome Extension Pushes Past the WSJ Paywall
It's pretty easy it was to get around the New York Times' newly erected paywall, and now there's a free Chrome browser extension that does exactly the same thing for the Wall Street Journal.
The extension, "Read WSJ Extension," has been labeled as a way to "cheat" the Wall Street Journal, but we're not quite so hyperbolic in our view. The reason is because it's always been easy to get around the WSJ paywall. Since arrivals at the WSJ that are directed to the site via search engines like Google skip through the paywall just fine, a simple search on the WSJ article title usually works.
Still, this is a much easier solution. How does it work? Exactly as above. If you click on a "locked" WSJ story, and watch carefully, you can see the extension bring up a Google search and then return you to the story. All it is doing is automating what could be done manually. You can tell which stories are "locked" because a little unlock icon (as shown) appears next to them.
While it's possible News Corp. is frantically ringing up Google to get the extension removed from the Chrome Web Store, this extension has already made the rounds of the Web and as we've said before: what's posted to the Internet, stays on the Internet.
The extension, "Read WSJ Extension," has been labeled as a way to "cheat" the Wall Street Journal, but we're not quite so hyperbolic in our view. The reason is because it's always been easy to get around the WSJ paywall. Since arrivals at the WSJ that are directed to the site via search engines like Google skip through the paywall just fine, a simple search on the WSJ article title usually works.
Still, this is a much easier solution. How does it work? Exactly as above. If you click on a "locked" WSJ story, and watch carefully, you can see the extension bring up a Google search and then return you to the story. All it is doing is automating what could be done manually. You can tell which stories are "locked" because a little unlock icon (as shown) appears next to them.
While it's possible News Corp. is frantically ringing up Google to get the extension removed from the Chrome Web Store, this extension has already made the rounds of the Web and as we've said before: what's posted to the Internet, stays on the Internet.
