Written by: J1N, Techub News

In the era of information explosion, high-quality news reports and in-depth analysis are often blocked by paywalls. However, users’ desire to get information for free has spawned a range of browser plugins called Bypass Paywalls Clean (BPC) and others. This type of plug-in uses technical means to bypass the website's payment restrictions, allowing users to freely access originally restricted content. Although this meets the needs of some users, it has also sparked extensive discussions about copyright and ethics.

In August 2024, BPC and its 3879 branches in Github open source documentation were banned. The reason is that the News Media Alliance (NMA) filed a complaint with the GitHub platform that hosts the plugin code. The organization, on behalf of the interests of more than 2,200 news, magazines and digital media publishers, accused BPC of bypassing technical measures to protect content that violated the rights of its members and violated the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

In August 2023, the NMA filed a similar complaint with GitHub. Unlike previous cases, GitHub released all the details of the complaint, including the complainant’s information and the legal basis for deleting the content. In a letter sent to GitHub, the NMA explained that BPC involves not only copyright infringement, but also technical measures to circumvent content protection, which is a direct violation of DMCA Article 1201.

NMA discovered four repositories containing illegal software products. These include "bypass-paywalls-chrome", "bypass-paywalls-firefox", "bpc_updates" and "bypass-paywalls-clean-filters". Each repository contains code that allows users to bypass paywalls on websites protected by various technical measures. Depending on the content protection system used, some publications offer a limited number of free articles (so-called "soft" paywalls), while others block unsubscribed access completely (hard paywalls).

NMA emphasizes that all these repositories contain tools that violate DMCA regulations, bypassing technical content protection measures. GitHub found that the NMA’s allegations were justified after reviewing the complaint and conducting his own investigation. As a result, the platform disables all 3879 repositories, including the main BPC repository, which has dealt a heavy blow to the developers and user communities that support the extension.

It is worth noting that the paywall technology of many mainstream media such as Bloomberg and the New York Times actually adds restrictions at the front-end level of the web page, and relies on JavaScript or cookies in the browser to control user access rights. This mechanism is not technically strict, and it is more like a "preventing gentlemen but not villains". By default, most users will abide by the rules, but do not set up encryption or backend verification that is really difficult to crack. This gives plugins like Bypass Paywalls Clean an opportunity. By clearing cookies, disabling JavaScript, or emulating crawlers, you can easily bypass these soft restrictions and directly obtain the complete page content.

This reflects a contradiction: on the one hand, the news media needs a pay wall to protect the source of income, and on the other hand, they dare not completely block the entrance, because this will affect search engine crawling and user experience, and even directly lose traffic. Therefore, to a certain extent, paywalls have become a delicate psychological game between media and users.

Journalism is in trouble, and the Reuters Institute of News said that in 20 markets around the world, only 17% of people spend money to watch news, a percentage of 10% a decade ago. In the United States, this is 22%. Even among those who claim to be very or extremely interested in news, 57% won’t pay for online news. Users’ bypassing paywalls can hardly be directly measured as theft, but according to the All About Cookies survey, about 60% to 70% say they will avoid sites with paywalls, and about 60% say they “frequently look for ways to access paywall content for free.” By comparison, 69% of Americans said they had used other people’s streaming service login information, while 80% did not consider password sharing of this nature a kind of stealing.

Lance Ulanoff, one of the world's top technology media, said that "the era of free websites is coming to an end, and there is nothing you can do about it." His article lists the reasons for the current dilemma of journalism: ProductionThe cost of quality content (from short news posts, long product reviews to articles and videos) is high; ads in publications fail to generate revenue for media companies due to the rise of ad blockers, or fewer people viewing content and ads because Google provides AI-generated content summary in search results. Even without the above factors, traditional media like CNN.com are struggling, as a large percentage of users read news from other sources, usually YouTube or TikTok. Two-minute TikTok is unlikely to have the depth of CNN.com or The Washington Post article, but that doesn't matter. Young people trust these sources, and a large amount of traffic is thus directed to the video media platform.

Although the above reasons have caused the decline in traffic on news media platforms, many people still rely on these traditional media websites to obtain news and information, and are not used to paying for content and are unwilling to enter the paywall field. For example, Margaret Sullivan, executive director of the Craig Newmark Center for News Ethics and Security at Columbia Journalism School, "holds complex feelings" about the paywall. She was glad that The Guardian used the fundraising method to replace the payment wall, and she also canceled the paywall for the content of "American Crisis" she posted on Substack. Like the average reader, her attitude towards paywall stems from her frequent reading of articles on various platforms and being frustrated with being asked to pay for each opening of a website. She said, "I also feel angry when I read articles that I am interested in because I encounter a paywall."

So if the paywall is cancelled, can the media and users win-win results be achieved? How much impact will the paywall strategy have on the operation of media? Media data analytics company Mather Economics released a report titled “Paywall blocking rates for “closed” and “open” news websites bring revenue optimization insights,” which analyses the performance of 118 news media sites a year after changing their paywall strategies in March 2023. Research variables include monthly users, monthly page views, conversion rate per million users, and paywall conversion rate. Finally, we can see how their paywall strategies affect subscriptions, retention, and revenue through economic models.

Publishers included in the study were divided into two groups, one group of news websites, the "closed" group, allowing fewer free articles, so more visitors would encounter paywalls. Another group, the "Open" group, allows more free content, so fewer visitors will encounter paywalls. And meet the following standards: provide paid subscriptions; at least one standard content restriction form (registration wall, advanced paywall, metrological paywall);Accurately distinguish three types of restrictions through all data quality checks and verifications from March 2023 to March 2024.

Conversion rate comparison chart (purple is the open group and blue is the closed group)

From the changes in user volume and page views, both groups showed a downward trend, which is consistent with the decline trend of the entire news industry during the same period. However, the monthly number of users and page views in closed groups has dropped significantly, especially since August 2023, the gap in page views has emerged, and the difference in number of users has begun to be obvious since October 2023.

In terms of conversion rate, although the conversion rate of the closed group is relatively low, due to the increase in the brand efficiency and volume of the platform, its conversion rate per million users is higher than that of the open group. The conversion rate of open groups is higher when there are fewer users, because the user's participation has increased relatively after consuming more free content.

Economic model shows that closed group websites have increased by an average of 46% in the number of new subscribers, but the disadvantage of this strategy is that the user retention rate is low, which means that the risk of user churn increases. To achieve the same number of subscribers as closed groups, open groups need higher retention rates as balance, for example, annual retention rates of 85% in the first year and 63% in two years.

In addition, in terms of advertising revenue, the closed group's advertising revenue was significantly affected a few months later due to the decline in page views. In the early stage, the open group had a relatively mild impact on advertising revenue due to the small decrease in visitors.

Overall, closed groups adopt a more radical subscription acquisition strategy, which can bring more new subscription users in the short term, but they need to face the pressure of user retention and long-term advertising revenue; while open groups improve user experience and participation through a looser pay wall, but if they want to achieve the same level of return as closed groups, they must put more effort into user retention and pricing strategies.

No matter what profit method the news media adopts, news organizations have the responsibility to show the value of their content to the audience, explaining why it is worth paying for. Journalism has many different techniques to encourage people to pay, but they only pay if they enrich people’s lives. A considerable number of people are already willing to pay a lot of money for current news, but most people are not willing to pay for current news.