22

Every now and then, mainly on sites like Skeptics, I come across a Stack Exchange post that links to a paywalled article. This isn't great, because even if the post is quoting the linked material like it's supposed to, the original source is still inaccessible to most visitors.

Recently, I discovered a service called 12ft Ladder that is able to bypass these paywalls, and then provides you a link to the un-paywalled article. It's occurred to me that I could replace any links to paywalled articles I find here on SE with 12ft Ladder links, or if I ever find a paywalled source while researching an answer, I can use 12ft Ladder to make it accessible to all when I write the answer.

However, I know SE does not condone piracy, and I'm conscious that bypassing a paywall might fall on the wrong side of that line. So I figured it'd be best to ask: would I be allowed to post links to articles whose paywalls have been bypassed in this fashion? Or is this forbidden under the "no piracy" rules?

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    I'm pretty sure that one of the individual sites has a meta discussion with an official response... now I just need to remember is which site that was.
    – Catija Staff
    Commented Jan 20, 2022 at 21:52
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    I might have technically done this with an answer I wrote recently... it linked to a New York Times article and pulled a quote, but I opted to use a Wayback Machine archived link in case they changed the wording later. However, that does have the effect of bypassing NYT's paywall.
    – bobble
    Commented Jan 20, 2022 at 21:56
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    @bobble note to self: next time, use curl https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/world/europe/ukraine-biden-eu.html -O when hit by paywall ...
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented Jan 20, 2022 at 22:23
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    I've used some complicated techniques to get around blocking. For example, I've backed up Google's cached version of a site on Archive.org (not sure they still allow this, maybe another archive site would). But neither of those are piracy sites at least. What about that?
    – Laurel
    Commented Jan 20, 2022 at 23:16
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    @Catija Maybe this? Links to copyright material
    – 41686d6564
    Commented Jan 21, 2022 at 1:10
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    Regardless of whether it's allowed, perhaps one downside of doing this is that you may end up with more dead links once the service is taken down. For that alone, I wouldn't exactly encourage it. Just quote the relevant parts with attribution to these sites, and it will be there as long as the site exists.
    – Tinkeringbell Mod
    Commented Jan 21, 2022 at 7:50
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    JNat found it for me. space.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1033/…
    – Catija Staff
    Commented Jan 21, 2022 at 14:33
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    @Tinkeringbell Indeed. I can see a case for adding an additional link, but not for replacing it up front.
    – Mast
    Commented Jan 21, 2022 at 16:50

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