Posted on 12/25/2002 9:37:44 AM PST by Sabertooth
More and more websites now require subscriptions and passwords before viewing their material. As they do, I've found that I don't want dozens of subscriptions and passwords. They're a nuisance and an invitation for spam. No thanks.
This has become especially true of excerpted news stories from certain websites. Because of a legal settlement, some stories may no longer be posted in full at Free Republic. Yet clicking on the link only brings up a subscription window where some of these sites are concerned. Again, no thanks.
Fortunately, I've discovered a work-around, a completely legal and honest way to view these stories at their websites without subscribing. I'm not sure how long this loophole will last, but I thought I'd pass it along. I'll also include a way of setting up a two-step link on excerpted threads at Free Republic.
Let's start with the problem. Take this excerpted thread on Free Republic as an example:
FreeRepublic.com "A Conservative News Forum"
Click to scroll to commentary.
Intelligence Official Will Lead TSA Profiling Effort
Washington Post ^ | Tuesday, December 24, 2002 | By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Posted on 12/24/2002 11:31 AM PST by MineralMan
The federal Transportation Security Administration has hired an intelligence official with database expertise to oversee development of the agency's computer profiling system, a proposed network of supercomputers intended to instantly assess every passenger's background for potential ties to terrorism, officials close to the project said yesterday.
Ben H. Bell III, who recently served as deputy director of a technology-oriented terrorism task force at the Justice Department, is expected to work out technical and policy kinks that have delayed what some officials regard as the most ambitious domestic data-surveillance system ever begun by the federal government.
If you click on either the source link, or "Excerpted - Full Article," you get that lousy subscription page. Here's how you get around it:
Open up another window in your web browser, and go to Google News Search (http://news.google.com/). Copy the headline, "Intelligence Official Will Lead TSA Profiling Effort" into the search field, and click the "Search News" button. You'll find yourself at this page, with the link to the original article in the search results. Click on the headline, and you'll be reading the article without subscribing. Nice, huh?
For posters of articles from subscription sites, you can follow the instructions above before posting, and then provide links through Google News to the article so that Freepers won't have to mess with subscriptions or passwords.
Please note that the only purpose of the above information is to avoid the subscriptions, not to in any way encourage violations of various legal agreements which prohibit posting anything more than excerpts from certain websites.
Many Tools of Big Brother Are Up And Running -- New York Times Dec. 23, 2002
It's still a neat backdoor via Google, and given the life span of of postings on FR, it usually outlast the discussion period.
No doubt, they will close the loophole sooner or later.
Cheers, CC :)
I notice the end of that URL reads "partner=GOOGLE". I bet if you took that off, it wouldn't work. (I can't try it myself since I am registered with the Times (hey, it's for the crosswords, leave me alone), so any time I access one of their pages it shows up with my username on it.)
A sidenote on the use of "cypherpunks/cypherpunks": If the site you're using won't let you use the same word as both your password and username, then the username is "cypherpunks" and the pass just "cypherpunk". Also, if the username and password have to be less than 8 characters, you just enter as many as you can: "cypherp"/"cypherp" for example.
Let's start with the problem. Take this excerpted thread on Free Republic as an example:
Sabertooth, I had no problem reading the full article when I clicked on your link or any of the other links.
No subscription or password needed came up for me.
I know there are some sites but I don't think the Washington Post is one of them.
I think a few times I have tried to view the New York Post and it said I needed to subscribe.
If anyone wants to access the Premium section of the New York Times, they can use this username to get in - bbirules.
Someone from a NY Giants football BB set this up in order that Giant fans like myself can read the sports pages!
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