As PCMag pointed out, there are many ways to breach the forthcoming New York Times subscription service. However, the Times is taking action to plug at least one paywall's many holes by asking Twitter to shut down @freenyt, the account created with the intention of posting all Times articles.
The paywall, which will be fully rolled out March 28, allows readers to access up to 20 articles a month for free before they're asked to cough up some cash. Premium access costs between $15 and $35 a month, depending on the level of service. The "walled garden" approach has many caveats; access via articles posted on Facebook and Twitter is unrestricted. So as many have noted, it was only a matter of time before a twitter feed like the one the Times is trying to squash was created. In fact, @freenyt was born less than 12 hours after the paywall plans were announced last week.
"We have asked Twitter to disable this feed as it is in violation of our trademark," a Times spokesperson said.
@freenyt fired back: "Dear NYT: if you don't want people following your stories on Twitter then you probably shouldn't, you know, post 'em on Twitter," said a tweet posted on its feed.
The holes in the Times' paywall are similar to the story of a man trying to cover cracks in a leaky dam using his arms and legs. He might cover one leak with his hand, but eventually water will seep through another hole, and he'll find himself balancing on one foot to keep the dam's contents contained.
The Times says it's already run interference on other violators. NYTClean is a bookmark published by a Canadian coder that defeats the paywall with four simple lines of code. But is it only a matter of time before the paper will try to block this loophole, too?
"As we have said previously, as with any paid product, we expect that there will be some percentage of people who will find ways around our digital subscriptions. We will continue to monitor the situation but plan no changes to the programming or paywall structure in advance of our global launch on March 28."
Even without tools, readers could always skirt around the free story cap by clearing the cache on their browser, thus resetting the limit. The preponderance of loopholes has critics asking if the paywall, which the Times spent $40 million creating, will even work.