16
votes
"Mirror" tag
A pretty simple feature. Just seems like it would be handy to apply a tag to posts that provide non-paywalled or archive links for posts that are walled or 404'd. The idea just being that it seems too much to put an "Exemplary" tag on it, but it seems too significant to just get a vote.
Ideally this would add the free link under the "Link Description" scrape, but that's probably hard to do. I guess you could also promote the tagged comment to the top of the stack, but then it seems like you can game out the sort to promote your commentary rather than just the link.
The issue with this idea is that Tildes is a Canadian site, run by a Canadian registered non-profit, and so is subject to Canadian laws. And our copyright laws up here tend to be even stricter than the US in many regards, especially when it comes to "Technological Protection Measures (TPM)". So any site features that explicitly help facilitate or actively encourage circumventing TPMs (which paywalls are classified as) could potentially get Tildes in serious legal trouble... And that's not just a pure hypothetical either; There have been several major cases already of successful lawsuits against defendants circumventing TPM, with statutory damages awarded to the tune of tens of millions of dollars (E.g. Nintendo v King). And it's not just cases of reverse engineering electronics where that happens. Individuals and businesses have also been successfully taken to court over circumventing news site paywalls as well (E.g. Blacklock’s Reporter v Canadian Vintners Association). So I very much doubt Deimos would want to risk implementing any feature that could potentially result in a similar lawsuit against Tildes.
Anyone who provides mirrors/archives of paywalled articles in their comments here is taking that potential liability onto themselves though, and it's up the them to decide if they're willing to do that.
If it's an NYT article I'll generally use a gift link. I don't share things often enough to where I'm likely to run out. (Subscribers get like, 10 a month).
I don't actually have a WaPo subscription, so I couldn't do it for that one.
Thanks for the ping. I responded below.