How to hack the New York Times paywall

I’ve hesitated posting about this topic for weeks, as I’m more than a bit ambivalent about showing readers how to bypass the NYT’s new paywall. I really enjoy The New York Times, and would hate to see it fail, so I encourage you to support the paper, particularly if you are a frequent online reader.

I do recognize, however, that some of you may only occasionally exceed the 20 articles per month limit.  Adding to the issue is the fact that The Times has inexplicably made it very easy to bypass the paywall. In the final analysis, each of us has to decide where we land on the ethical issues involved. That said, here’s a short list of methods, ranked degree of difficulty…

• Easy: Chrome and Firefox users, drag this piece of javascript to your bookmarks bar - NYClean. When the paywall notice pops up, click on NYClean. Done.  (Thanks to David Hayes; see his original post here:  Work around New York Times 20 article limit)
• Easy, but requires a bit more initial effort: IE users who wish to use NYClean – create a new bookmark, right click on it and select Properties, and replace the URL with this code:

javascript:(function()%20{var%20s=document.createElement(‘script’);s.setAttribute(‘src’,'http://toys.euri.ca/nyt.js’);document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)[0].appendChild(s);})();

• Easy: Firefox users – use Private Browsing
• Moderately easy: when the paywall popup appears, put your cursor in the URL, and delete everything after (and including) “&gwh” – then hit Enter
• Moderate PITA: copy the headline of the article you want to read, and then search for it using Bing; click on the NYT link in the Bing results, and you can read the article
• Moderate PITA: check this Twitter feed – someone posts links to NYT articles at Twitter, which you can read in their entirety!
• Complete PITA: Delete your cookies whenever the paywall popup begins appearing

Good luck. There’s always the possibility that some of these methods won’t work in the future.