A tipster to my blog discovered an easy way to get around the Press+ paywall, which recently launched on the Lancaster Online obits page: Turn off JavaScript.
I tested this on several browsers yesterday, and sure enough. It works.
LancasterOnline has not yet responded to my inquiry, but this morning, David Brauer of MinnPost received a reply. Basically, LancasterOnline is not worried. Obit readers and the tech savvy do not meet in their Venn diagram of online readership, they say.
While this may be true, anyone who plans to use Press+ to make money should be aware of the easy methods for circumventing the tool that’s meant to bring in extra revenue and take into account what kind of hit their profit plans could take, should people get the hang of changing a setting or applying a script.
A couple quick theories on this:
First, they’re probably right in thinking most obit readers either don’t know how to turn off JavaScript or don’t care enough to do so. That may mean a lot who simply go somewhere else, but probably a few will pay.
But there may be advantages to the approach (intentional or not). JS is more portable than a server-side approach. Link to it from your page and it works. There’s more to it for the actual paying part of the pay wall, but the wall is easy to set up.
Finally, you know who always has JS turned off? Google. If the page is blocked by JavaScript but still linked in HTML, it’s possible search engines can still index it.
It can also be circumvented by using a different browser, clearing cookies or using private browsing mode on your browser.