Farhad Manjoo of Salon writes Friday that The Wall Street Journal can be read for free online, even though owner Rupert Murdoch said earlier this year that he will maintain a subscription online.
Manjoo wrote, “The Wall Street Journal also wants traffic from search and link sites, but instead of doing away with its pay gate, it has set up a technical method to let people from these sites come in for free.
“The system works like this: If you click on a subscriber-only WSJ link from an ordinary Web site — say, a link that I post here, or a link from within the Journal’s own site — you’ll be sent to a limited version of the article, and you’ll be asked to log in to read the whole thing.
“But if you click on a link to that same article in Google News, you’ll be sent to the full story for free. This is true, also, of WSJ links on Digg, and probably a few other big referral sites, too.
“Understanding this practice gives us two ways to get full Journal articles.”
Read more here.
