Salon shows how to read WSJ for free

In his Salon Machinist blog, Farhad Manjoo shows how to read any article in the Wall Street Journal online (one of the few online papers that charges money for a subscription) for free. As a bonus, he includes an explanation about why this is ethical (though he admits it's "slightly deceptive").

200803210818Remember that the Journal is set up to disarm its pay gate if it thinks you're coming from Google News or Digg. In order to get free access, then, you've got to convince the Journal that you've clicked on a link on one of those sites. How to do that?

The technical name for this is "referer spoofing" (with the misspelling). Spoofing is an easy thing to pull off in Firefox — all you've got to do is download this add-on, refspoof.

When you've installed that app, you'll see a new toolbar [shown above]

Now follow these steps:

* Go to WSJ.com.

* In the refspoof toolbar's "spoof:" field, type "digg.com."

* Also in the refspoof toolbar, click the R icon, and select "static referrer."

* That's it. Click around the site; the WSJ thinks each click is coming from Digg. The WSJ is now yours for free!

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