9 ways around the Irish Times Paywall

The Irish Times has a paywall! Yaay!!

I think it makes sense to take a two pronged approach to this challenge.

Let's first look at ways to get around the paywall manually and then, having found something that works, let's look at automating it.

*There are a multitude of options but I think the simplest approach is to just use private browsing in Firefox and Chrome. Got a link to an Irish Times article? Just right click on it and select 'Open Link in New Private Window' / 'Open link in incognito window'. (Firefox / Chrome) You'll be able to see the article and any further links you click on in that window will ignore the paywall.

If you read the IT on a regular basis you are presumably asking yourself whether anything in it is worth the effort of a right click. To avoid having to make this kind of effort the process can be automated using the following browser add ons https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-private/ https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/incognito-filter/cifilbmpnkjinlkchohdfcpdkmpngiik/details

and you'll never see the paywall again.

*I doubt very much if anyone in Tara Street has an answer to the above but if they were to pay someone to 'fix' their paywall there are still a host of other options for bypassing it.

Since you are allowed a number of free reads we can presume the paywall is cookie based. One could try deleting the cookies.... In Firefox, for example, that's Tools/Options/ShowCookies/Search 'irishtimes'/Remove All Cookies or else use this applet when on the IT site: (Save this link as a bookmark or favourite and click on it when on the IT site) [url=javascript:(function(){C=document.cookie.split(";%20");for(d="."+location.host;d;d=(""+d).substr(1).match(/..*$/))for(sl=0;sl<2;++sl)for(p="/"+location.pathname;p;p=p.substring(0,p.lastIndexOf('/')))for(i%20in%20C)if(c=C[i]){document.cookie=c+";%20domain="+d.slice(sl)+";%20path="+p.slice(1)+"/"+";%20expires="+new%20Date((new%20Date).getTime()-1e11).toGMTString()}})()]Remove Cookies[/url]

*Alternatively, since the IT opinion formers are worried about becoming even more lost in an intellectual ghetto than they are already, they will let you read an article if you are coming from a Google search... So just search for the article's title. And click on first link (Or else use Google as a proxy - put this http://gmodules.com/ig/proxy?url= before the url of the IT article. In fact there may be other ways of altering the url to bypass the paywall. Let us know if you find one.)

They're the manual versions but if either of these last two approaches, cookies or Google, became necessary they could both be automated if someone were to write a Greasemonkey script like this one http://userscripts-mirror.org/scripts/review/183850.html Then a casual user would just have to install Greasemonkey and the script. That's two links to click, two install buttons to press and never see the paywall again.

*Finally there's the javascript option. A bookmarklet similar to this one for the New York Times [url=javascript:(function()%20{var%20s=document.createElement('script');s.setAttribute('src','http://euri.ca/files/nyt.js');document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(s);})();]NYTClean[/url] might be able to remove the popup window. (Anticipating that the paper might keep changing the popup window DOM name, the bookmarklet calls another short script that is hosted remotely and can be easily updated in response. The general user doesn't have to update anything.) Personally speaking, I think having to click something each time you want to read an article in the Irish Times seems like more effort than can be justified. On the other hand, if the DOM name wasn't being constantly changed, removing the popup window could be done automatically using Adblock Plus.

tl:dr (In summary) To read a single IT article; Right click the link to the article and select 'Open Link in New Private Window' / 'Open link in inconito window'. (Firefox / Chrome) In that new window you can browse the rest of the IT in peace.

To read IT articles at all times without ever being bothered by the paywall; Install the add-ons 'Auto-private' or 'Incognito-filter' (Firefox / Chrome) and enter irishtimes.com in settings

Feel free to copy and paste this anywhere you want.