News publishers take paywall-blocker 12ft.io offline
Source: The Verge
The News/Media Alliance, a trade association behind major news publishers, announced that it has “successfully secured” the removal of 12ft.io, a website that helped users bypass paywalls online. The trade association says 12ft.io’s webhost took down the site on July 14th “following the News/Media Alliance’s efforts.”
12ft.io — or 12 Foot Ladder — also allowed users to view webpages without ads, trackers, or pop-ups by disguising a user’s browser as a web crawler, giving them unfettered access to a webpage’s contents. Software engineer Thomas Millar says he created the site when he realized “8 of the top 10 links on Google were paywalled” when doing research during the pandemic.
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Still, in an ironic twist, Millar began asking users to pay for a subscription to 12ft.io to help cover the cost of the tool in 2022. “I’m making it my mission to clean the web,” Millar said at the time.
In its announcement, News/Media Alliance says 12ft.io “offered illegal circumvention technology” that allowed users to access copyrighted content without paying for it. The organization adds that it will take “similar actions” against other sites that let users get around paywalls. The News Media Alliance recently called Google’s AI Mode “theft.” (Like many chatbots, Google’s AI Mode eliminates the need to visit a website, starving publishers of the pageviews they need to be compensated for their work.)
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Read more: https://www.theverge.com/news/709209/news-media-alliance-12ft-io-takedown-paywall
I've seen a number of DUers mention and recommend 12ft.io, so I'm posting this in LBN.
I agree with the News Media Alliance (final quoted paragraph above) that what Google's AI Mode does is theft. Article in The Verge in May:
https://www.theverge.com/news/672132/news-media-alliance-google-ai-mode-theft
During Google I/O on Tuesday, the company announced that it’s expanding AI Mode to all users in the US, which appears in a new tab directly within Search. When users enter a query, AI Mode serves up an AI-generated response alongside a list of relevant links.
“Links were the last redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue,” Danielle Coffey, the CEO and president of News/Media Alliance, said in the statement. “Now Google just takes content by force and uses it with no return, the definition of theft. The DOJ remedies must address this to prevent continued domination of the internet by one company.”
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Hold my beer 
