An error occurred during a connection to archive.is. Cannot communicate securely with peer: no common encryption algorithm(s). Error code: SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP
They anticipated this reaction and have made some significant privacy promises about the data they receive via Google Public DNS:
"We delete [the] temporary logs [which include your full IP address to identify things like DDoS attacks and debug problems] within 24 to 48 hours."
"In the permanent logs, we don't keep personally identifiable information or IP information. After keeping [the data we do keep] for two weeks, we randomly sample a small subset for permanent storage."
And importantly:
"We don't correlate or combine information from our temporary or permanent logs with any personal information that you have provided Google for other services."
The key point in all the beautiful promises Google makes is that you need to extend then with "for now". That summarises the healthy skeptical stance, especially when it is about a company that should have given you plenty of examples about why we shouldn't trust them.
Having seen how Google operates on the inside, I trust them to be fully able and willing to comply with the promises they do make, better than most companies. The typical tech startup overpromises and underdelivers with respect to data deletion and security, or simply does a really weak job at those things without making any promises either way.
Adhering to these promises is a separate question from changes of policy in the future, of course, and just as separate from failures in the areas of product design or ethics. Many parts of the conglomerate that calls itself Google have gotten worse in all of those areas over the last several years, though I am still a big fan of how GCP is progressing.
But none of this makes me think that they're retaining more Google Public DNS data than they claim. Given how little of that data they retain for the long haul, the risk of bad retroactive impact from a change in policy in this area is quite low. The risk is admittedly higher for other consumer services which do retain identifiable data over a long period of time.
Conversely, the risk is lower for G Suite and GCP offerings and for European residents, given the concerns and compliance obligations of business customers and the obligations imposed by the GDPR.
In the past, I would agree with you, but with the recent legislative push for privacy around the world, especially in the EU, I doubt very much that any company as big as Google will be able to have much wiggle room to make privacy policies weaker in the future.
Or we could support the authors -- Let's not make HN the kind of community that encourages posting ways around paying journalists for their work on articles that keep our industry in check.
Does anyone else get rubbed the wrong way by this sort of irreverent infringement? Even if you have zero concern for journalists’ copyrights, it puts this forum at risk.
Fair use exemption makes specific reference to "purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting" - those are just the first three listed, and all three apply to a HN post.
This is a gross misrepresentation of fair use doctrine. Fair use requires a "transformation" of the work. It does not permit reproducing a work in its entirety without permission just so you can have a discussion about it.
If it put the forum at risk, they wouldn’t put the “web” link after the title of the post, which basically accomplishes the same thing. This kind of thing is officially sanctioned.
Websites like WSJ manage to get listed high in the Google rankings by presenting the actual article, instead of a paywall, to the Googlebot and to requests with Google in the Referer field (as I understand it). I gather that they do the same thing to the Archive scraper. As far as I'm concerned, that's a cheap trick the website performs, and using a cheap trick to get around it seems fine to me.
The other way of looking at it is that it can boost publication revenue and journalist income by driving more traffic to the publication than it would otherwise get, of which some may convert to subscriptions (if the publication can offer sufficient incentive).
Obviously, no user would be able to justify buying subscriptions to every publication linked from HN.
And if there was no paywall bypass, then HN couldn't link to it and it would get no HN traffic and no discussion on HN at all.
Allowing paywall bypass means the publication gets the HN traffic and discussion it wouldn't otherwise get, and the possibility of converting some of that traffic to subscribers who wouldn't otherwise subscribe.
For what it's worth, the owners/operators clearly don't think it puts this forum at risk, as the sharing of paywall bypass links is explicitly allowed/encouraged according to the guidelines and moderator comments.
And the very fact that the publications themselves allow bypass via certain referrers (e.g., Facebook) suggests they don't have a problem with it.
While I think posting paywalled links is basically advertisements and I therefore have no problem with people posting accessible versions, I am curious about the same question. I think the question about the legality is legit and shouldn't be downvoted (unless I'm misinterpreting the guidelines). Not sure I'll like the answer and potential new rule, though.
